


Keep This Wolf

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, M/M, Mystery, Romance, Unspeakable Draco, Unspeakables, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-01-20 10:22:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 27
Words: 83,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1507037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco knows full well that he’s being set up. There is no other reason to pull an Unspeakable out of the Department of Mysteries and assign him to negotiate with a werewolf pack. But when he learns the werewolf leader is Harry Potter, Draco wonders if the setup isn’t a different kind than he anticipated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bloody The Circle

**Author's Note:**

> A fic for enamoril, who asked for a story like my “Business Meetings,” where Draco is the leader of a group of vampires and Harry their Ministry-appointed negotiator, but reversed, with Draco as the negotiator and Harry as the werewolf. This story will be updated every Tuesday until it’s finished. The title comes from the poem “Wilderness” by Carl Sandburg:
> 
> _THERE is a wolf in me … fangs pointed for tearing gashes … a red tongue for raw meat … and the hot lapping of blood—I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go._
> 
> This fic will have some strong gory and graphically violent scenes.

“Unspeakable Malfoy?”  
  
Draco raised his head. He’d been studying his fingers in his lap for too long a time, he knew. The sharp tone scraping along the edge of Invisible Heldeson’s bland voice told him so.  
  
It was the only thing that would tell him so. Invisibles were the highest ranks among the Unspeakables, and Miriam Heldeson hadn’t earned her rank by being highly emotional. She sat behind her desk with a face like still water and perfectly tailored grey robes that would only flow around her when she moved, because they wouldn’t dare do anything else. The surface of her desk was free of anything except the discreet plate that announced her rank; personal mementoes were another weakness.  
  
“Yes, Invisible,” said Draco, and his voice was perfect. It didn’t need to be, since he had already revealed his emotions, but he wanted it to be, and so it was.  
  
“You can pay attention, then.” Heldeson handed him the file across the desk. “This is the file on Tyr Thornsberry. Scion to Fenrir Greyback.”  
  
“Scion?” Draco raised his eyebrows as he took the file. Scions were werewolves bitten and then trained by a certain other werewolf, held so closely and so intensely that some of the mentor’s personality and looks were stamped on them. Scions usually carried on a werewolf leader’s “work” after they died, whether that was living wild in the woods, trying to integrate werewolves into wizarding society, or running about and biting normal people. Draco flipped the file open and scanned the first page, finding, as he’d expected, that Thornsberry had changed his first name not long after Greyback’s bite.  
  
“Yes,” said Heldeson. “Greyback bit him sixteen years ago. We did not know until after Thornsberry was arrested for attempting to bite the Minister’s son that he was the Scion.”  
  
Draco nodded. He knew Greyback had been killed in battle five years ago. That had been all over the newspapers, impossible to escape even if you  _did_ spend most of your time buried up to the nose in files that weren’t supposed to exist in the Department with the cloudiest reputation in the Ministry.   
  
“The attack on the Minister’s son was revenge, then,” Draco said.  
  
Heldeson didn’t respond. Getting that far was elementary reasoning, the kind expected of Unspeakable apprentices before their initiation.  
  
Draco passed slowly through the file. Unlike some of his colleagues, he couldn’t absorb all the information he needed to know with a glance. He had to read more thoroughly, for comprehension. He knew that Lucius had lamented that sometimes, would have liked a prodigy for a son.  
  
But Draco had achieved what he was in spite of his name, for his mind and his memory and his familiarity with the Dark Arts and his ability to dance along the edge of temptation without succumbing to the lure of any kind of magic. Invisible Heldeson herself had been the one to appear in his office late one night and offer the training to him.  
  
Draco laid the file down when he came to the last page. “I had thought that ordinary werewolves would want to distance themselves from Thornsberry,” he murmured, and looked into the Invisible’s eyes.  
  
Heldeson would not display emotion, and Draco doubted even Professor Snape could have penetrated her Occlumency shields, but she lifted her head. “This is not an ordinary werewolf.”  
  
Only one person in the wizarding world—well, perhaps two now that Draco knew Thornsberry, due to be released from Azkaban in a month, was Greyback’s Scion—fit that description. Draco was too well-bred to sigh, even without his training.  
  
He looked one more time at the last page of the file, the only one that included a photograph of Thornsberry as he had looked before he was sent to Azkaban. He was a solid man, with corded muscles and a tattoo of a dark chain on one upper right shoulder. His hair was short, as was his beard, both blond with strong marks of grey. His eyes were the amber-yellow usually only acquired when the werewolf spent too much time in communion with his beast.  
  
“I will go,” said Draco, and he rose from the chair and bowed to Heldeson. One didn’t need to, but he was high enough up in the ranks to make it a gesture of respect, and he wanted to let her know that he knew she had done all she could to aid him.  
  
Draco turned and left the Invisible’s office with long strides, letting the door fall gently shut behind him. His face would reveal nothing of what was going on behind it, as always, but his mind buzzed and burned.  
  
Harry Potter was no ordinary werewolf. Draco Malfoy was no ordinary choice for a negotiator.   
  
There was no reason for the Ministry to reach into the bowels of the Ministry and pluck out an Unspeakable whose talent lay with disarming and rebuilding Dark artifacts, rather than diplomacy, to change Harry Potter’s declared intention of taking Thornsberry into his pack. No reason that would be apparent on the surface, at least. But if his father would be disappointed in some respects with what Draco had become, Draco hoped that he would  _not_ be disappointed in Draco’s general level of intelligence. If there was no obvious reason, there would be many less obvious.  
  
Draco had abandoned the game of politics his father played because he had found something more interesting, an opportunity more seductive. But he still remembered the board, the pieces, the movements.  
  
And how not to be a piece himself.  
  
*  
  
Harry stood with his eyes closed, his arms folded and his crossed hands clutching his elbows. He didn’t hold his wand, not yet. The person—the  _werewolf—_ across the circle from him did.  
  
Harry had offered that particular advantage when June Norcom had agreed to duel with him, and settle their dispute that way. It was the only reason she had agreed at all, actually. Harry was so good at defensive and offensive magic both, now, that Norcom would normally have chosen open debate, or at least claws and teeth.  
  
She would have the right to begin the duel with her wand in her hand, and five seconds when Harry would not strike at her.  
  
 _Fool_.  
  
Harry heard the countdown to the beginning of the duel start outside the circle. He turned his head in that direction, unnecessary when his ears now brought him so many keener sounds, but he wanted to let them know he was listening. That he was right here, that he hadn’t retreated into his head and abandoned them.  
  
They reached the end of the count and shouted the beginning. Harry heard Norcom’s breath draw in to begin the spell.  
  
Harry opened his eyes, and  _moved_.  
  
He had promised not to strike at her; he had never promised to stand still. He heard Norcom’s startled shout as Harry bounded off to the side, moving with werewolf speed and wizard flexibility, rushing almost straight up the side of the single tree included within the confines of the dueling ring. Harry hit the first branch, swung himself up, stood for a second with bark under his bare toes, and then launched himself from it straight at her.  
  
Norcom cried a hasty curse. It went past Harry with a stinging sound. But it didn’t actually sting, and that made all the difference.  
  
Harry had once ridden Firebolts, and this wasn’t harder. He hit the ground with his feet, propelled himself up with a twist, and hit Norcom with a Leg-Locker while she was still scrambling to focus on him and paralyze him with her own spell. Harry watched a bit indifferently as her knees locked and she fell over. Yes, perhaps she would be humiliated to be defeated by such a simple jinx. On the other hand, Harry didn’t really want to damage any of his pack.  
  
“Do you yield?” Harry asked, stepping forwards so he could put his wand against Norcom’s throat.  
  
She glared up at him. June Norcom had been turned when she was young enough that her beast had grown along with her, and she had bright brown eyes and silvery hair that marked her out as exotic to some wizards, but wouldn’t reveal her as a werewolf to anyone who didn’t already know.  
  
“You bastard,” she said. “You never intended to play fair.”  
  
“I kept the rules of the game,” Harry said, and smiled at her. Norcom endured that gaze longer than he thought she would before looking away.  
  
“Yes, fine, I yield,” Norcom said. Before Harry could move away and lower his wand, she added, “But you might want to think about what it says that so many of the pack don’t want to adopt Thornsberry!”  
  
“Certainly I’ve thought about it,” Harry said, cocking his head in the invitation for her to meet his gaze again. She didn’t do that, and Harry shrugged and went on. “And I invited anyone who objected to meet me in the dueling circle.”  
  
“You—you must have known that you would win.” Norcom scowled at the ground the way she wouldn’t dare at him. “You were only choosing the kind of contest where you would always have the advantage!”  
  
Harry waited some more, for a more real objection, but nothing happened. He sighed and glanced at the members of his pack who surrounded the circle. They flinched and turned their eyes away, heads bowed, shoulders hunched.  
  
“Of course I chose the kind of contest that would lead me to the advantage,” he said, and tried to keep his voice level. When he let his growl into his words, it always worked out differently than he thought it would. “Wouldn’t any pack leader do the same? Or must I be alone among them in  _trying_ to lose, because of what I was before?”  
  
Silence. But most of his pack had been wizards, and most of them had been changed in the aftermath of the second war with Voldemort, and most of them had some idea about his status as a “hero” that meant he should “play fair” while everyone else was allowed to do whatever they wanted.  
  
“If I was that kind of weak leader, none of you would follow me,” said Harry, and reached down, sliding his nails along Norcom’s left forearm. She flinched, but Harry had cut her in a place that wouldn’t impede her from doing daily tasks, and the wound would have healed by the next full moon. He lifted his hand, shaking it, and blood soared away from his fingernails to land on the ground and the edge of the circle.  
  
The ritual requirements for the shedding of first blood invoked, Harry stalked out of the dueling circle and away from Norcom. That meant turning his back on her, but although he heard a little indrawing of breath as if she was tempted, she didn’t strike at him. She knew the rules as well as he did.  
  
Harry snarled to himself, and one of the older werewolves who had been about to come up to him stepped aside. Harry couldn’t say that he regretted it. Sarah Woolwine always had some kind of “problem” she needed solved, namely her jealousy of people who were younger and faster than she was.  
  
Harry flung himself along the woodland path he walked most frequently. The Forbidden Forest had its darker trails even for a werewolf, the ones that would challenge him, and this one was on the brink of a challenge. Harry walked it with his eyes and his head snapping back and forth, and things that had come up to the edge of the trees shrank back again.  
  
He had become a werewolf when a woman who had come to the Ministry for her Wolfsbane too late on the night of the full moon had bitten him during her transformation. Harry hadn’t liked it, but he’d dealt with it.  
  
And that meant deciding what “rules” he was going to honor, and which ones he wasn’t. When he had come to the Forbidden Forest, after a few failed attempts to live in the wizarding world and with other packs, he had immediately decided it didn’t make sense that the current leader ruled. He was an old man, not even wise, but manipulated by others who had thought that his fading strength made him a convenient puppet. As long as he was in charge and could win brute challenges, the powers behind the throne didn’t have to fight.  
  
Harry had been told the rules of the pack by these people, but they were too greedy and too quick, and didn’t check their lies with each other. And so he had learned that he could challenge the leader and remove him only on the night of a full moon, the day before a full moon, only after his first hunt with the pack, when the leader agreed to let him, when the pack held a vote, and half a dozen other ways.  
  
The “rules” of a pack were a lot like the “rules” of the Ministry and the way it treated the Boy-Who-Lived: they could change. So Harry had chosen his own time, a battlefield that favored him—the leader, consumed with arrogance and wanting to prove that he didn’t fear the Chosen One, had been easy to persuade—and an easy way to win. He didn’t even have to kill the old leader, the way that werewolf challenges were supposedly to the death. He just had to win.  
  
He did, and he became leader, and although he had never cared much for controlling others, it had become clear since he’d been a werewolf that either he did that or they controlled him. And Harry Potter had had  _enough_ of that.  
  
He reached the end of the path, in a clearing of tall, strong oaks with black bark, and leaped easily from the ground and to the nearest branch. He pulled himself up to lie flat on it, and looked down into the trampled grass and earth of the clearing.  
  
Harry didn’t care for a lot of the changes that had happened to him since he became a werewolf, but he loved the ease of movement in his new body, the power and quicksilver sliding of his muscles.  
  
He rested his cheek on the bark and looked down. If the pattern of the stars—and now he sounded like a bloody centaur—held true, then Paracelsus would return any time.  
  
There was a slight quiver in the tree next to him. Harry rolled to the side, dropping fast, and heard something slam into the branch where he had been. He heard the soft curse, too, and rolled to his feet, grinning, tilting his head back so that he could regard the disappointed vampire clinging above him.  
  
“Don’t you ever get tired of that?” he asked.  
  
“Your blood would be delicious,” Paracelsus said, which Harry supposed was all the answer he was going to get. Paracelsus rearranged himself on the new branch where Harry had lain, and sniffed at the bark as if that would let him absorb some of Harry’s blood and warmth through his nose.  
  
Harry whuffled, a noise that never failed to annoy a lot of people, and leaned against the half-boulder behind him. “What news?”  
  
“Where is my payment?” Paracelsus turned his head, and Harry caught a glimpse of his pale face. Paracelsus had lived long enough to resemble a giant insect, light and dry, rather than a mammal, but right now he was trying the effect of a pout.  
  
“You had it already,” Harry said. “Now, if you don’t mind, the news. Or I’ll go away and ask the centaurs to cast my fortune for the next month from the stars after all.”  
  
That made Paracelsus come to attention, as he knew it would. For whatever reason, Paracelsus hated centaurs, and not just because they made annoying, vague pronouncements, which Harry considered a good reason. He had tried to explain the genealogy of his hatred to Harry once, but Harry had hit him with acorns until he stopped.  
  
“The Ministry is sending someone to negotiate with you,” said Paracelsus. “To persuade you not to accept Thornsberry into your pack, I am certain. They would prefer that he remain isolated so that he will commit some other error and they can safely kill him.”  
  
Harry grimaced. He would be the last to admit that Thornsberry was an  _appealing_ packmate. Fenrir Greyback’s get and Scion. Who would willingly spend time with  _him_?  
  
But Harry was a leader in a way that most werewolf packs didn’t recognize anymore, and he was confident of his ability to stamp his own personality and traits on Thornsberry if he could live with him long enough. Hell, anyone he bit and trained would become his own Scion. Harry hadn’t done it so far because he disliked the thought of spreading his infection, but he was capable of it.   
  
And he wasn’t going to offer that particular service to Thornsberry for Thornsberry’s own sake. It was more for the sake of werewolves everywhere, to show that violent werewolf criminals could be reformed and that the Ministry didn’t need to follow them around prosecuting them after they were out of Azkaban.  
  
Harry’s first attempts to live with people after he was bitten had failed because he’d still been trying to pretend he was a normal wizard. Now he knew better. He’d  _never_ been normal, and wouldn’t have been without the effects of the bite, either. It was better for everyone when he stopped pretending, and wouldn’t let the people around him get away with their comfortable delusions, either. Witches and wizards like Norcom thought it would be better if he did.  
  
But they were wrong.  
  
“Who are they sending to negotiate?” Harry asked. This was the real information he had sent Paracelsus to infiltrate the Ministry and discover. The general idea of what was coming, he could have got from the centaurs’ circle-casting, or maybe even the ramblings of his own packmate who claimed to be a Seer, and did sometimes speak true prophecies.  
  
“Draco Malfoy.” Paracelsus hung upside-down by three limbs from the branch, watching Harry to see what would happen.  
  
Harry hoped he liked hilarity. The laughter struck him so hard that he had to sit down. He bent over, whooping into the moss on the floor of the clearing, and was aware of the more-than-slightly-baffled silence from above.  
  
But only three of Paracelsus’s limbs were on the tree branch. There was one free, and Harry reached up and easily caught the rock he tossed, an egg-sized stone that could have broken his skull.  
  
“Weak tactics,” Harry noted, and crushed the rock with an easy motion of his hand. When he opened his fist, dust dribbled out.  
  
“It wouldn’t be if you were less strong,” Paracelsus said, and stuck his tongue out at Harry, and leaped from the branch, vanishing into the Forest.  
  
Harry remained where he was for a moment, watching the grass sway and smelling the scent of stagnant water from a pond not far away. It was possible that Malfoy was in on some kind of complicated plot to try to stop him from giving shelter to Thornsberry, and Harry would need to be more careful than ever around him.  
  
But he also thought it unlikely. Malfoy was probably as surprised about this as he was, as uneasy.  
  
Harry smiled as he stood.  _Or more uneasy. Because Malfoy probably doesn’t know yet why I’m so confident that I can accept Thornsberry into the pack, and probably doesn’t want to be here._  
  
If the Ministry was determined to set a negotiator on him, though, Harry could have had worse opponents. He had changed in the years since Hogwarts, and not merely from the bite. Malfoy would find him no easy challenge if he intended to take Harry down.  
  
 _And it might be interesting to see how_ I  _can challenge_ him, Harry thought, leaping from the edge of the clearing and making his casual way through the Forest, back to his pack.


	2. Command the Pack

Draco stepped away from the Apparition point and spent a moment studying the outer edges of the Forbidden Forest. It had been some time since he had been here, and he’d been uncertain whether the Forest’s physical appearance had been changed in any way by the werewolf pack living within it.  
  
It didn’t look like it. The Forest was still looming and dark and full of greenery that both tempted Draco—because he knew how many exotic Potions ingredients could be obtained by someone willing to take a little risk—and made him wary—because of the werewolves, but also because of other things. He made sure that he had one hand on his wand before he moved closer to the Forest, and that his steps were silent.  
  
Invisible Heldeson hadn’t needed to warn him against being seen by any of the villagers of Hogsmeade or the students wandering about. Draco moved swiftly and silently through the shadows of the trees, and in between them.  
  
He did pause, once he was out of mortal sight, to touch a small crystal cube hanging from his belt. It began to glow when he tapped each of the four corners in a certain sequence, and Draco relaxed once he saw how strongly and steadily the light flooded through the crystal.  
  
The Unspeakables had many artifacts in their possession: useless ones, mysterious ones, ones that wizards would give their hearts and souls for (and sometimes had, in the past), and Dark ones. Draco was an expert at taking those last, whenever an Auror raid or another of the Ministry’s activities seized some from their former owners, and extracting the Dark magic to replace it with useful magic of some kind. Most Dark artifacts weren’t actually that useful, no matter what their owners thought, unless one wanted to end up a combination of malformed, mutilated, decaying, dead, and insane.  
  
This particular one would give him light that wouldn’t fail, unlike the  _Lumos_ on a wand knocked out of a wizard’s hand, and at the same time, flare when another being in the Forest sensed him and began to move towards him. It had taken Draco a long time to work out how to make the magic respond to the change in someone else’s mind, instead of his own. He was, he thought, justifiably proud of it.  
  
Now he glided down the paths that led towards the heart of the Forest, not looking around as small scurryings accompanied him. Those were all of lesser creatures moving  _out_ of his path. The only ones worth paying attention to were the ones that the crystal flared for.  
  
The silence of the Forest, minus those little scurryings and some motion of the leaves in the breeze, closed around him with stunning swiftness once he was a short distance inside. Less than a mile away were wizards living a life as normal as any among their kind in England, but here, one would never know it. Draco breathed in the scent of dirt and darkness and wild things, and found himself smiling.   
  
He wouldn’t have chosen to come here on his own, and he wanted to find out the name of the Ministry official who had thought he would be “perfect” for this job. But he did miss the wind and the light when he was cooped up in the Department of Mysteries.  
  
The darkness moved in front of him, at the same time as the crystal flared. Draco stopped, drawing in a breath of irritation that he didn’t allow himself to release. The crystal’s main weakness was that it wouldn’t alert him in time if someone was near when they sensed him and thought about moving towards him. Draco had been relying too much on the way that it should warn him early. It was his own fault that he’d been caught off-guard with it.   
  
He looked at the woman who was confronting him. She was powerfully built, but neither that nor the streaks of grey in her hair told him that she was a werewolf. It was more in the way she held herself, as if she would run back into the woods rather than out of them. It wasn’t many normal wizards who would feel that the Forbidden Forest was the  _safe_ option.  
  
Admittedly, the golden eyes and the snarl she flashed him a second later helped, too.  
  
“Why are you here?” she demanded. “What is a  _wizard_ with a  _wand_ doing in our Forest?”  
  
“Do the centaurs know that you claim the whole of it?” Draco murmured before he could stop himself, and for the pleasure of seeing her flush with confusion. He held back his smile. He might have already ruined the image of calm and collected diplomat he was trying to project, at least for one member of the pack, but he could avoid showing any more emotion. “I am Unspeakable Malfoy, from the Ministry, come to speak to Harry Potter.”  
  
The woman had been hunched, apparently still on the verge of fleeing, but when he said that, she threw back her shoulders and took a deep breath. “Then you’ll convince him that he shouldn’t let Thornsberry into the pack?” she whispered.  
  
 _So there are some werewolves who don’t support Potter’s mad notion to recruit Thornsberry? Interesting._ Draco didn’t know much about the internal workings of werewolf packs, but he had had the impression that they closely followed their leader. And in the case of the leader being the Great Harry Potter, it seemed even more likely they would cling to his shadow. Internal opposition might make Draco’s task easier.  
  
“I certainly intend to,” he said. No sense lying, when the pack would find out his mission soon enough. “Can you take me to him? And introduce yourself, so I don’t find myself doing you a discourtesy by thinking of you only as a werewolf?”  
  
The woman hesitated, staring suspiciously at him, but bland courtesy was a mask Draco had perfected the year after the war. Still slowly, she nodded, and said, “My name is Sarah Woolwine. And you’re different from what I expected when I heard the Ministry was supposed to send us a representative. I thought it would be someone from the Collarers, not an Unspeakable.”  
  
Draco nearly asked what she meant by “Collarers,” but then decided it was obvious. The Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures would hold a special place in werewolf minds. “Thank you, Sarah,” he said gravely. “Can you take me to him?”  
  
“I didn’t give you permission to call me by my first name,” she said, and her teeth flashed at him.  
  
“Thank you, Miss Woolwine,” Draco said, without turning a hair. He respected the abilities of werewolves, but he found it hard to take  _implicit_ danger all that seriously after the amount of serious, explicit things with teeth or Dark magic he had seen coming at him in his line of work. “Will you take me to him?”  
  
Woolwine spent a few minutes considering him, as though to decide whether his non-apology was sufficiently groveling, and then sniffed and set off. She dodged down narrow paths as though she hoped that would lose him. Draco followed behind her perfectly well, though. Maybe she was quiet in wolf form, but she couldn’t be completely silent as a human, and the trailing red robes she wore, still edged with gold, caught and flashed in the light of his crystal.  
  
The Forest opened up as they went down the path, and Draco caught sight of others, well-used, leading off from the main one they were on. Now and then he could see clearings, with the edges of thatched roofs, and sometimes piled rocks that looked like the entrances to caves. Or there might be a fence or a Shield Charm humming around a vegetable garden, with the tops of carrots and potatoes visible. Draco almost smiled. He could imagine that the pests one would have to keep out of a garden in the Forbidden Forest would be formidable indeed.  
  
The crystal flashed again and again, warning him of sentient beings looking at him and making their minds up about him, until Draco tapped his wand against it and commanded it to stop shining. It was getting to be nothing more than a distraction now.  
  
The path spilled, finally, into a larger clearing than Draco had known existed in the Forest; he had thought the trees would always move to claim so much open space as soon as they could. The floor looked like it was made of tightly packed dirt, and no wonder, if as many people as were in at the moment were always walking over it and through it. Simple chairs were set up here and there, along with vine hammocks, and dozens of pairs of eyes turned to Draco as he stepped across the edge of the clearing.  
  
In the center, or a little off from center, on a chair no bigger than the rest, sat Harry Potter. He stood up with he saw Draco, nodding familiarly to him. “Malfoy.”  
  
Draco stared. He knew that he was being silly, and neglecting his duties as a diplomat. He should have been able to move past the first few seconds of shock, bow smoothly but without making it seem as if Potter was the one in command here, and then go straight ahead into the next important piece of business: telling Potter why he was here.  
  
But he found it impossible to keep his mouth from going dry, or his eyes from fastening on Potter’s face and form.   
  
Potter wasn’t any taller than he had been, and it was probably pure werewolf magic rather than confidence, but he seemed to have settled into his skin far better than when Draco had last seen him, after the Death Eater trials. His muscles flowed more smoothly than they should; he came towards Draco with his hand extended, and even the hand seemed broader. The lines on his bloody  _palm_ seemed longer, more deeply carved. And his hair shimmered with a kind of dark aura echoed in the way that his green eyes flared as he locked them on Draco. Those were  _definitely_ darker. Draco had assumed amber would taint them, the way it did the eyes of most werewolves, but then, wolves could have green eyes as well. This had just made them more noticeable.  
  
“Malfoy?”  
  
Potter’s voice was low, questioning, but Draco knew all about werewolves’ enhanced senses, and assumed that the ones around them could probably hear the amusement in Potter’s tone. Draco bristled and shook hands quickly, then spent a moment in that precise bow after all. He didn’t do it because he wanted to show respect to Potter, exactly, but because he needed some time to recover from his own attack of emotion.  
  
He had to remember who he was and why he was here. The Ministry had done this probably as some sort of revenge against Potter and some sort of attempt to weaken the Unspeakables. Draco’s work kept him out of most Department politics, but the matter of the ownership of some artifacts could become a political issue. Draco had to go along with what they wanted for now, and show himself obedient and unthreatening and docile to their purposes, until he could figure it out, and strike back.  
  
Falling over his own feet around Potter was  _not_ an element of that.  
  
“Unspeakable Malfoy, please,” Draco said at last, raising his head. “I struggled for the title, and I find that I don’t like to relinquish it.”  
  
For a moment, Potter assessed him in a way that made Draco think he would refuse. Then he nodded, and said, “Fine. You can call me Potter or Harry, I don’t care. I don’t have any formal title,” he added, turning around to face his pack again, but evidently catching the question in Draco’s eyes.  
  
Draco watched the way the werewolves straightened to attention or sucked in their stomachs as Potter’s eyes swept across them, and wanted to snort.  _Of course. You’re just innocent of all power and all ambitions, aren’t you?_  
  
Potter glanced back at him with a spark in his eyes that made Draco tighten his Occlumency shields immediately. No one had said that Harry Potter had become good at Legilimency—he had been terrible, the last time Draco knew anything about it—but on the other hand, no one had talked about the sheer  _power_ that had settled into his skin, either.  
  
“Coming?” Potter asked calmly.  
  
“Did you want to meet with me immediately?” Draco knew how to make his voice neutral, even after a shock like this. It had taken him a few minutes longer than it should have, and he hoped that information didn’t make its way back to Invisible Heldeson, who was more likely to demote him if it did. “Or did you want me to introduce myself to the pack and then come back tomorrow?”  
  
“I hadn’t thought you would be leaving,” said Potter, with a long, languorous blink. “Not until tomorrow and after the feast we plan to throw you in welcome, anyway. You have quarters here that you can use. They’re guest quarters.”  
  
Draco crossed the distance between him and Potter with business-like strides. Potter just looked at him, watching him come. Those eyes made Draco wonder if Potter had got used to assessing threats in a new way since he’d become a werewolf.  
  
 _Of course he has. I need to stop speculating and deal with what’s in front of me._  
  
“I would be glad to be treated as a guest,” Draco said, and let his voice lilt up with the question.  
  
Potter smiled at him. The effect of that smile was something no one had described, either. Luckily, Draco knew how to resist facial expressions better than he did the aura of power around Potter. His father had used them as manipulation all the time, and most of the Unspeakables weren’t above during the same thing. “Of course you will be. It’s not your fault that you’re here, is it? You didn’t make the decision.”  
  
“I shouldn’t be surprised that you have spies inside the Ministry,” said Draco, shaking his head, although he did wonder who Potter had managed to sneak into the Department of Mysteries, of all places.  
  
Potter snorted, and his eyes shone. “Keep thinking that, if that’s what you want to, Malfoy.” And he swept ahead, leaving Draco to stare at his back for a second before he caught up.  
  
“I didn’t realize how much of the Forest you’ve taken over,” Draco said, as they reached the edge of the clearing and werewolves parted around them like a stream around a rock. Now he could the see the side of one of those little cottages. That was presumably the guest quarters Potter had been talking about. “Your pack is larger than I thought it was. Are you sure that you can afford to support another one?”  
  
“No talking about business just yet, Malfoy.” Potter pointed around the trunk of a large tree. “You’ll find the guest quarters there. Not big, but it has a bed, a writing desk with parchment and ink in the drawers, candles, a spell-protected toilet, and a warded trunk for any belongings you care to put down.” He studied Draco a minute, eyes running up and down his body in a way that made Draco want to twitch. “You didn’t bring much.”  
  
“I wasn’t planning on an extended stay,” Draco said. “And why should business wait, Potter? You know what I’ve come to discuss, but I don’t know your arguments in favor of taking Thornsberry into your pack yet. Surely we should speak?”  
  
“ _Pleasure_ comes before business, of course,” said Potter, and winked at Draco—bloody  _winked_ at him!—while nodding again at the house. “Take the chance to refresh yourself; there’s some water in there, too. Or write an owl to your employers and let them know you’ve arrived safely, if you want. I’ve got to go oversee the preparations for the feast.” Then he strutted off, accompanied by an escort of werewolves.  
  
Draco stared after Potter for a second. Then he remembered who might be watching, snapped his head straight up, and stalked into the house instead. It was as Potter had indicated, except that there were more blankets on the bed and more luxuries altogether than Draco had thought there would be.  
  
He sat down, cast some spells that would prevent anyone from spying into the house or eavesdropping while he was there, and then began, very carefully, to consider which of his actions or gestures might have been responsible for weakening him so much in Potter’s eyes.  
  
*  
  
Harry hid his smile as he went to talk with Woolwine and some of the other wolves who thought that Malfoy being here meant he should immediately give up. And then he had the feast to arrange, of course.  
  
He had expected Malfoy to be pompous and angry and cold, which he still was. But he hadn’t expected the way that he moved, or the start he visibly gave when he saw Harry for the first time, or the magic that crackled around him and reached out to Harry’s own when they shook hands—although Harry thought Malfoy didn’t feel that as much. And he hadn’t realized that Malfoy evidently lacked some information on werewolf noses: that they could smell most emotions.  
  
This was going to be hard and complicated, and the Ministry was interfering in what didn’t concern them again. Thornsberry had served his sentence. He ought to be left alone once he was out, and if Harry’s pack wanted to take him in, that was Harry’s business.  
  
But this was also going to be  _fun_.


	3. Eat the Feast

Draco arranged the wards on his trunk once more and gave it a dubious look. He had to admit that he wasn’t entirely sure he should trust in the strength of wards provided by his “hosts.” Presumably, if they wanted to bypass them and enter the trunk, then they could.  
  
Which meant the only sensitive things he carried, his wand and the artifacts that he had changed and adapted for the Unspeakables, would stay on his person. But he had of course arranged a few papers in the trunk that looked interesting but weren’t really, just to see what Potter would do.  
  
It would be interesting to see—although perhaps hard to tell if the wards on the trunk were breached.  
  
Draco turned to one of the luxuries Potter hadn’t mentioned the house containing, perhaps because he assumed that Draco would treat it as a matter of course. The mirror told Draco his hair was smooth and flat, and added, with an envious little sigh that made Draco curl his lip, that his lovers didn’t know how lucky they were.  
  
“When I have a lover, I’ll be sure to tell them that,” Draco said, and stared into the mirror for one more moment. No, he could see no sign of the weakness that would have made Potter treat him so casually. It must have been in his expression and the way he moved only.  
  
Shaking his head, he turned up the cuffs on his Unspeakable robes and cast the spell that would line them and the hems with decorative gilt embroidery. It was the only concession he intended to make to this feast that Potter had been talking about. And had the rest of the pack known they were giving it? From some of the stares that they’d given Potter’s back, Draco wondered.  
  
There was one potential source of friction, one way to undermine Potter’s authority. It seemed that some of his pack, like Woolwine, were less than happy with all of his decisions. Woolwine at least struck Draco as someone who would like to lead her own pack and make her own decisions. If Draco could make Potter pay too much attention to the werewolves he already had under his command to worry about Thornsberry, that would serve the Ministry’s purposes, though in an indirect way.  
  
But then, Unspeakables rarely worked any other way.  
  
Draco cast one final charm to repel mud and fallen leaves from the bottom of his robes, and then stepped out the door and walked calmly in the direction of the feast. There was no doubting what direction that was, not when lights shone through the trees and someone had already lifted their voice in a rather rude drinking song.  
  
Draco half-smiled. Either Potter enjoyed that kind of merriment, in which case Draco could think of other ways to undermine him, or they were singing it against Potter’s wishes, which was an excellent sign of rebellion.  
  
“Unspeakable Malfoy.”  
  
At least Potter had sent someone who knew how to be courteous, and was noisy enough that Draco didn’t bolt in surprise when he stepped out of the shadows. He looked like he was an older werewolf, at least given the grizzle on his chin and the way his orange eyes had sunken back into his head. He bowed his head and murmured something that Draco suspected were instructions for following him. It would be strange if they were anything _else_ , really.  
  
He dodged around trees, past gardens, and past what looked like a pit of seeping mud. Draco wasn’t sure that he wanted to know what the werewolves had been doing there. Some of them, he saw, had left muddy footprints behind them. Perhaps the gilt he had conjured onto the edges of his robes made him overdressed for the feast.  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows a little at his own thought. He didn’t need to think that way. What _mattered_ was meeting his own standards, and he would do that even if no one else in the pack did.  
  
Then the trees and shadows that still blocked the way seemed to fall off abruptly, and Draco stepped back into the big clearing. This time, large tables and benches, reminiscent of the House tables at Hogwarts, had been pushed together in the center to replace the chairs and hammocks. Draco studied the tables’ legs and thought he knew how much of the dirt in the clearing had been packed and smoothed down.  
  
Werewolves sprawled on the benches, toasting each other and eating from huge plates of nearly raw meat and what looked like mountains of honeycakes. Among them moved centaurs, and a few flickering creatures that Draco made sure to watch only from the corner of his eye. They looked like dryads, and while the artifacts he carried might make Draco safe from their charms, he wasn’t sure enough about that to be all that _happy_ looking at them.  
  
“Welcome, Draco!”  
  
Draco started again, but this time he thought he had reason. The thought that there was someone here who he would know well enough to let them address him by his first name…  
  
Then he realized that there was no one here he knew that well, but simply someone who had claimed the privilege. Potter came bounding through the light of the bonfires that flickered in the center of the clearing, and the swaying lanterns hung from ribbons that spanned the branches of the trees.  
  
“Glad you came!” Potter chirped, and shoved the large wooden goblet he was carrying into Draco’s hand. It sloshed, and smelled worse than Firewhisky. Draco tried to press it back, but Potter had whirled away, and it was hold it or drop it. Draco _knew_ he would have looked sillier dropping it, and he ducked his head and hung on as best he could. “Come! What would you like to eat? Or would you prefer dancing? I know some people don’t dance after they eat, but some people prefer it.”  
  
“I didn’t intend to dance at all,” said Draco, rattled but holding it back. No, he hadn’t thought that this feast would include dancing. If anything, it looked like the bold parties he had read about some Old Norse wizards throwing in the far distant past, not the elegant galas that Draco sometimes attended at the Ministry. “Why would I? I don’t know anyone here who could partner me.”  
  
The way that Potter smiled at him a moment later made him rethink having said that.  
  
“Really?” Potter was looking over Draco’s shoulder at someone behind him, but Draco refused to turn and see who it was. He didn’t think anyone would dare try to kill him in the middle of this celebration, and that was the only threat worth paying attention to. “You don’t think I could give you a challenge?” And he turned back and used those devastating eyes on Draco to their best effect.  
  
Draco’s pulse was high and harsh in his throat. Yes, he was regretting having said that. But since he _had_ said it, the least he could do now was be gracious about it.  
  
“I don’t know you well enough to dance with you,” Draco said. He thought it a smooth recovery. The spark in Potter’s eyes said he disagreed, but Draco was going on, even more smoothly, slick as oil. “Besides, you and I might have to have some very unpleasant discussions about Thornsberry soon. It wouldn’t be wise to taint those discussions with anything from this.”  
  
“Taint?” breathed Potter. His hand came to rest on Draco’s forearm, and squeezed. His smile was deep and dazzling, and so much like a smirk that Draco wondered who had taught him that. Gryffindors didn’t smirk. _Potter_ didn’t smirk. “An interesting word. Do you think I’m incapable of keeping business and pleasure separate?”  
  
Draco looked around the feast.   
  
Potter laughed aloud, and drew still more eyes and more attention. Draco had known he would be the center of observation in the middle of a werewolf pack, though, the one wizard here who wasn’t already part of them, and put up with that easily enough.  
  
The curl of Potter’s arm around his waist a moment later was something he jumped away from. But Potter just readjusted his stance and smiled at him.  
  
“I don’t want to make an enemy of the Ministry,” he murmured to Draco. “And I don’t want to make an enemy of you.”  
  
“Embarrassing me will,” Draco warned him. He had already shown so much of himself that he thought saying this was the best way to use the emotions as leverage.  
  
“And that’s the last thing I wish to do, either.” Potter’s arm and smile both became crooked at the same moment. “Won’t you partner me? I promise that I’ve learned better steps than I knew when you saw me dancing at the Yule Ball.”  
  
That had been the last thing Draco had thought Potter would bring up. But he knew now, now that he thought about it, that that was the way Potter worked. He was comfortable in his skin, settled into his power. Stinging Draco with reminders of the past that didn’t sting him was one way to win this contest.  
  
Draco didn’t intend to lose, and now Potter had physically left him no way to back out. He half-inclined his head and said, “I was taught to lead on the dance floor. May I?”  
  
“Oh, yes, why not?” Potter shrugged a little as he led Draco towards the center of the clearing, where the benches were shoved back and the dirt was flattest. Dozens of eyes watched them go. That sensation, at least, was familiar to Draco from years ago, and still sometimes from the meetings that the Unspeakables held to demonstrate the uses of some of their artifacts. “My training wasn’t that formal.”  
  
 _That could become a very annoying weapon, if I let it,_ Draco thought, as he turned opposite Potter and reached out to gather his hands. _That ability to turn every situation to his advantage and make sure he’s the comfortable one._  
  
But Draco _didn’t_ intend to let Potter take over the lead that way, and he made his case when he heard the music start. It was an old wizarding tune, one so old that it had hundreds of different variations as to the lyrics. A dryad was playing it by passing what looked like one long, twiggy finger over her leaf-stricken hair, her head bowed.  
  
Draco knew how to dance to that tune, no one better; it was the first one his mother had used to teach him, under the name of “The Three Cauldrons.” Draco turned to the left, now, and brought Potter with him to the right, and the dance began.  
  
There were gliding steps, leaping steps, steps where they had to turn under each other’s arms. Draco managed them all, and almost managed to forget his audience, although he could still sense the eyes watching him over the edges of mugs.  
  
His partner was the one who occupied his attention.  
  
Potter leaped easily over roots, smiled at Draco whenever they caught each other’s eyes, and twisted and turned as though he didn’t mind at all having an Unspeakable at his back. It was true that he didn’t know what some of the artifacts Draco carried could do, but that would have made Draco more cautious, not less.  
  
Potter just danced as if he wanted to…have fun.  
  
Draco nearly stumbled when he realized that. Potter paused in the middle of a step that would whirl them around each other, his eyes curious.  
  
“A twinge in my ankle,” Draco lied, not letting his words override the music, and then he began to dance again, pulling Potter into it. Potter relaxed and went back to the dance with a lightened expression.  
  
Draco’s mind was racing faster than their feet were. _Did he just start this debate over Thornsberry to have fun? Is his definition of having fun bedeviling the Ministry?_  
  
But that made it all the stranger that he’d want to annoy the Ministry by dancing with Draco. He ought to know that the Ministry wouldn’t care about that at all, whatever the inconvenience to Draco himself, and that Draco wasn’t the whole Ministry in his own person, only his mission and the Unspeakables.  
  
Draco sighed soundlessly as they passed over one more pair of roots and ended up dancing out into the middle of the clearing, whirling around each other a final time as the music came to a close. It seemed he had passed quickly through thinking Potter ignorant to assuming he must be possessed of _all_ unusual knowledge. There was no reason for him to know how much Draco resented having this mission, or that it had been fobbed off on him.  
  
“Thank you for the dance,” Potter said, bowing to him, the precise distance that one pure-blood partner on the floor was supposed to bow to another. Draco eyed him. Potter flashed him another smile that ignored the implicit challenge and extended his arm, braced and steady. “Shall we go to the feast? Feeding you is the least I can do after the exercise I made you take.”  
  
 _I don’t know if_ he _knows what he’s doing from one moment to the next,_ Draco thought irritably, and took Potter’s arm.   
  
*  
  
Malfoy ate as though he had some sort of stomach-wasting disease.  
  
Harry, his plate full of venison and fresh carrots and the stew that Marion Jackson made well when something woke her up from her sunlight naps, swallowed his latest bite and leaned over to pour more wine into Malfoy’s goblet. Malfoy glanced flatly at him. He hadn’t made much of an inroad on the wine, and Harry couldn’t trickle in more than a few drops before he had to stop in case the goblet overflowed.  
  
“Was that _really_ necessary?” Malfoy murmured, and reached for the goblet, lifting it smoothly, to down a single swallow. Harry watched his throat work. It was a handsome throat.  
  
“I wanted to do it,” Harry said, and settled back on his side of the bench. So far, he had seen one way Malfoy had changed, and that was to grow more stiff and formal. He still smelled of many emotions, like the shock that had made him stumble in the middle of the dance, but he was closing his reactions off since his surprise on arriving in the pack’s midst and finding Harry different than he’d obviously expected. The motions of his hands were short, precise. He didn’t turn his body towards a sound, only his eyes. He didn’t retreat from the werewolves that flowed around him, but seemed resigned. “And I think that you should stop treating us as though we’re about to kill you. Don’t you realize that that’s one of the things that might _make_ us strike at you?”  
  
“You are the one who would have to make that decision for the pack, I think,” said Malfoy, and patted at his lips with a napkin, although he hadn’t got any grease on them that Harry’d seen, because he wasn’t _eating_ anything. “And you seem too interested in me to order them to attack.”  
  
Harry blinked, then smiled slowly. It was true that one of the reasons he had invited Malfoy to dance was to see what he would do, and another because he wanted to see how well he moved in case _Malfoy_ took it into his head to attack, but another reason was simply because he enjoyed the sight of him in motion. “You understand that interest?”  
  
Malfoy’s scent spiked and prickled, and he shook his head. “I know that you want Thornsberry in your pack,” he said, lowering his voice, likely in case the centaurs that tromped by, in the midst of a deep discussion about Saturn, overheard him. “But I still don’t really understand _why_. I was hoping you would explain more than you have.”  
  
“Business waits for tomorrow,” Harry said, and leaned back into his place. He could feel the currents of the pack, lazily eddying into place, focusing on him. Someone would demand something of him soon, probably before he went to bed tonight. “This feast is in celebration of your arrival here. I wish you could see it as a good thing, too.”  
  
“Frankly?” Malfoy stirred the wine in his goblet and took one more drink. “I would rather be back in my office working on an artifact that’s likely to kill me.”  
  
Harry snarled a laugh. Malfoy focused on his mouth while he did it, though Harry couldn’t be sure if that was real interest or just wariness of his teeth. “I thought you would say that you want to be sleeping in your own bed. Here are a bunch of _werewolves_ who could kill you. Doesn’t that matter? What’s the difference between them and your precious artifact?”  
  
That was one problem Malfoy was having, at least, in Harry’s opinion. He had forgotten how to have any bloody _fun_.  
  
Malfoy stared at him, then shook his head. “You honestly don’t see the difference?”  
  
“Not much,” Harry had to admit, with a shrug.  
  
Malfoy sighed, loudly enough that he stirred some of the hairs on Harry’s jaw. “The artifact wouldn’t do it intentionally.”  
  
Harry leaned in before he could stop himself, and put his hand on Malfoy’s wrist. Malfoy started and looked at him. He hadn’t forgotten how to move gracefully, at least, and the way his pulse sped up under Harry’s touch was rather intriguing.  
  
“I promise that no one here is going to harm you,” Harry said. “Unless you do something to harm one of them first, and even then, I would insist on talking it out and not letting them just attack you. I don’t want to cause an incident with the Ministry. I don’t want to damage the chances of the Ministry eventually agreeing with me that Thornsberry can stay here and cause no harm, although it might take them a while to see that. And most of all, I don’t want to hurt _you_.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
Harry fell back in his chair. So that was the difference, the real one, the secret, greatest difference, the one behind the way that Malfoy had stared at people, had shifted his weight, had eaten or not eaten, stirred or not stirred, all evening. He didn’t think that anyone in the pack held his life at any value. Perhaps he held it at only conditional value himself, thinking that he was only worth anything as long as he could serve the Ministry or work on his artifacts.  
  
“Because I want you alive,” Harry whispered to him, and leaned in again.  
  
Malfoy’s eyes shone slightly, but not with emotion, as much as with the light of the fires. His lips parted a little. The air between them was warm and full of smells: blood, grease, salt, hormones.  
  
Harry tore himself away. He was getting uncomfortably intimate here, and he didn’t want some of the pack to draw the conclusions they would, if he remained close to Malfoy.   
  
“Think about it,” he told Malfoy. “Think about when you became so paranoid that you assumed everyone you went to treat with was an enemy out to kill you.”  
  
And he left the table, and went to ask Sarah Woolwine to dance. She was fussing at the moment, but she was graceful, and would partner him well.  
  
If not as well as Malfoy.  
  
 _Poor Malfoy. Does he honestly not think all that much of himself?_  
  
*  
  
Draco lifted his goblet and swallowed some more wine. It was starting to make the fires and the people around him swim, not a good thing, but he needed a barrier between himself and what Potter seemed to have been suggesting just then.  
  
He didn’t even have words for what Potter had been suggesting, but he knew being drunk was less dangerous than listening to it.  
  



	4. Bargain Them Down

"So, why did the Ministry  _really_ send you here?"   
  
Draco turned around, raising his eyebrows. A member of the pack he didn't recognize had landed on the bench next to him. His hair was white, his yellow eyes so bright that Draco thought he would see them reflecting out of the dark forest even in human form. He had heavy, curved nails on his hands, too, and the way he smiled seemed to reveal too many teeth. Draco nodded to himself without changing his pleasant expression. Here was someone who had spent too much time too close to the animal, like Fenrir Greyback.  
  
"I was sent to negotiate with your pack leader and try to persuade him not to adopt Tyr Thornsberry," Draco said. It was even close to the truth.  
  
The man snorted and leaned back on the heels of his hands, not taking his eyes from Draco's face. "What are they, fools? They should have known that you don't negotiate with someone like Harry Potter."  
  
Draco said nothing, only sipped a little more of his drink and waited with an open expression for whatever the man wanted to tell him.  
  
"You have to conquer him," said the man, and his eyes went to Potter, who was now whirling around the dance floor with the woman who had greeted Draco in the woods. "He doesn't respect anything else."  
  
"Not even the rules and traditions of the packs?" Draco murmured. In truth, he had known that already. It was evident in the way Woolwine had talked about Potter. And Draco had certainly never heard of any other werewolf pack leader throwing a welcoming feast for someone who had been sent with such a blatantly oppositional mission, or acting as though he had been friends with one of his former enemies for years.  
  
"Especially not them." The man leaned forwards. "I'm someone who tried to befriend him when he first came here, after failing to live in several other packs. And you see how he thanks me."  
  
"I don't, actually," Draco said. "Given that I haven't seen you and him interact at all, and you haven't even told me your name."  
  
The man blinked as if surprised to find that Draco had a backbone, then showed his teeth in what was probably a friendly grin and held out his hand. Draco took it, careful to avoid a scratch from his nails. "I'm Frederick Ninian. Can't blame you for not knowing me. I'm not famous outside the packs. Unlike  _some_ people." Again his eyes went to Potter, and his nostrils widened and flared.  
  
 _And so an opportunity to undermine Potter marches right up to me and lands itself in my lap._ Not that Draco simply intended to launch himself into planning conspiracy with Ninian. He wasn't an Unspeakable, and distrustful of others' motives, for nothing. Ninian wouldn't just walk up to someone who could hurt him and start talking like this. He either thought Draco was stupid, or his hatred overpowered his good sense. If it was the latter, he might make an unsteady ally.  
  
"It must be hard to have someone simply walk into your pack and think that he can command it because of his fame," murmured Draco, in a tone that he could describe as flat later, in case one of Potter's loyalists overheard him. He was already thinking much faster than his voice implied, though. He could convince Potter to abandon his plan to adopt Thornsberry, or he might simply replace him with another pack leader, one more responsive to the Ministry's plan to keep Thornsberry a loner.  
  
"It  _is_." Ninian leaned insistently forwards. "And what does he do, but defeat the old leader in a challenge that wasn't even sanctioned by our ancient traditions? He thinks he can do anything he wants, and he does it, as neat as you please." He sneered, and his hands tightened on the bench, making it creak.  
  
Draco sighed a little. "Well, one thing doesn't make much sense to me. If you dislike him and the majority of the pack dislikes him, why not just overthrow him? You know the traditions, and he doesn't. It should be easy to defeat him."  
  
Ninian stared at him. "This is the Chosen One! You don't just walk up and duel him and expect that you're going to get away unscathed."  
  
Draco looked down into his goblet, to hide his eyes, in case some of his contempt was escaping him. "I thought werewolves engaged in single combat with hands and teeth," he said quietly. "Not formal duels. Forgive my ignorance."  
  
Ninian snarled softly, and turned to watch Potter and Woolwine again. " _He_ always sets it up so that it's a formal duel to first blood. He says it's because he doesn't want to kill members of his own pack, but it's clear that he just uses the situation to his advantage. The pack leader can pick and choose like that. But he's not the right pack leader for us." His eyes glittered, and Draco thought he spied some of the hairs on the old werewolf's neck rising.  
  
Draco held back another sigh. Ninian had already contradicted himself. If the pack leader could pick how challenges for leadership went, then that suggested Potter had either won under the rules against their old leader, or the old leader had been stupid enough to pick a situation that  _didn't_ favor him. Either way, Ninian shouldn't resent Potter so much.  
  
But it wasn't Draco's place to explore the internal contradictions of the werewolf pack's approach to Potter. It was his place to exploit them. "Would you be willing to help the Ministry, then? I could put in a good word for your pack with them afterwards, as long as you didn't adopt Thornsberry."  
  
Ninian turned to him with that fluid quickness Draco found almost more disconcerting than the glow in a werewolf's eyes. "Why would you do that? The Ministry sent you here to negotiate with Potter."  
  
Draco smiled peacefully at him. "No. The Ministry sent me here to solve a problem." He left the obvious conclusion to hang unspoken in the air, and after a second, Ninian grinned and nodded, a swift bob of his head.  
  
Of course, he then had to make it spoken. "And if the problem is solved, the Ministry doesn't care how." Ninian stared hungrily at where Potter circled. "I don't want to be leader myself. Too much work. But I know the right person to put in Potter's place, so we can start talking in more detail about what it's going to take to replace him."  
  
"I'm sure you know best how it's to be done," Draco said, holding back a yawn of boredom this time. Good God, sparring with Potter, as confusing as it was, could at least entertain him better than these juvenile conspiracies.  
  
But he wasn't here to be entertained, either. He was here to explore different methods of solving the problem that Potter represented. Frankly, he should be glad to have so simple a method saunter up to him. And while Ninian had a certain measure of intelligence, it seemed that it  _would_ be that simple. Ninian was smart enough to seize the first chance that came along; that didn't mean he would be graceful about it.  
  
"The Ministry will protect us and let us keep living here?" Ninian turned his head to stare sidelong at Draco. "There were rumors that they were going to try and pull us out of the Forest to protect Hogwarts's students."  
  
 _Another problem with me being appointed by someone other than the Unspeakables to negotiate,_ Draco realized. But what the Ministry did after he was gone and the immediate problem resolved was no more his business than who became leader of the pack after Potter's fall. He only nodded and said, "I can put in a good word for you. After all, why would the Ministry want to harm a friendly pack?"  
  
"Why indeed," mused Ninian, and his hands twitched a little. He looked back at where Potter was dancing with Woolwine, and then smiled. "I think we can prove ourselves friendly to the Ministry in more than one way. They've been trying to get rid of Potter for years, haven't they?"  
  
"Have they?" Draco asked before he thought, and saw the suspicious way Ninian's eyes turned to him. He hadn't meant to phrase it exactly like that, as if it was a revelation. He was supposed to be the politics expert here, after all.  
  
But it  _had_ been a bloody revelation, and one he didn't much like.  _If I've missed something essential about the way the Ministry deals with Potter because I spend all my time down in the Department of Mysteries rebuilding artifacts..._  
  
He dismissed that a minute later. That was the career he had chosen, and for more reasons than one. A Malfoy paying too much attention to politics didn't mean the same thing after the war as it had before. It was probably a good thing that he'd distanced himself from all but a few old friends and applied himself to his job.  
  
At least, good when it came to most of the people in the real world, the one of the Ministry, the people he had to convince. Ninian was watching Draco with cautious eyes now, as if he assumed that Draco would run over right away and warn Potter.  
  
Draco shrugged and leaned back in his chair. "I didn't know that they were still pursuing such open tactics," he said. "I thought they'd turned to more subtle ones. The way I have."  
  
Ninian examined him minutely for a second, then huffed and relaxed. "Yes, perhaps. But you smelled as though this was a surprise."  
  
 _I bloody smelled,_ Draco thought. Suddenly, some of Potter's reactions to him made a lot of sense. He would have been able to sniff out, literally, the things Draco was trying to hide, his confusion and scorn.   
  
He hadn't said a word, but that meant not a word to Draco, not to the rest of his pack. Draco closed his hand around one of the artifacts that hung in a pouch from his belt, a small bracelet of several crystal spheres joined together, and only barely refrained from squeezing too hard. He had brought this one mostly as personal defense, not anticipating another use for it, but the more he envisioned Potter smirking and laughing to himself and not telling Draco the very simple secret, the more he wanted to use it.  
  
"Unspeakable Malfoy?" Ninian brought him out of his trance. "Are you all right? You've been glaring at our precious leader, and that'll make your animosity obvious."  
  
Draco smiled and turned his head. If he couldn't hide his emotions, he would have to find other reasons for them, and luckily, he had the reason for this one already in place. "I used to be Potter's rival in school. Another strange reason for the Ministry to choose me."  _Unless they have the plans that you think they do._  
  
Ninian let the unspoken remain unspoken this time, luckily. He nodded and chuckled, and said, "Fine. I can count on your willing participation?"  
  
"I have no desire to lead a werewolf pack," Draco said, his fingers rolling the crystal beads against the cloth of the pouch they hung inside. "But a great desire to get even with Potter."  
  
 _And I'll make sure that I don't play into his hands. Strange magic or not._  
  
*  
  
"You never play by the rules," Woolwine snarled softly to Harry as they whirled through the last steps of a formal dance. Woolwine maintained a false, pretty smile, but anyone who was close enough could see through it, or smell the anger musking off her body. Harry wondered why she bothered with the smile. "Even in situations where you really  _should_."  
  
"What makes the situation with Malfoy so different from the other ones where I've shown my disregard for the rules?" Harry turned her in one more circle, and stopped dancing with a bow to her. She had to do the same--not because anyone compelled her to, but because those were the social rules she so valued. "I know what I can do and what I can't do, and I've always got results."  
  
Woolwine glared at him some more, then shook her head. "You don't recognize in Malfoy the Ministry's latest attempt to destroy us?"  
  
Harry shrugged. He had always known that the Ministry wasn't happy with a large werewolf pack settled in the Forbidden Forest, but they hadn't cared enough to do anything about it until he became the leader. Then suddenly, it was a focus of efforts from "concerned citizens" to persuade the Ministry to move them out or outlaw werewolves living so near humans.  
  
"I have to admit, I don't know why they would have sent him in the guise of a negotiator if their goal is just to destroy us," Harry said.  
  
Woolwine glared some more at him, then stalked off. Harry let her go. She was someone he had to keep up the pretense of good relationships with, but that  _was_ one refreshing side to the rules in a werewolf pack: if someone got upset enough, they had to either retreat or challenge him. And Harry was going to win any physical or magical challenge they marshaled against him, and individually they didn't have the wit to make an effective social one.  
  
They could have got together and challenged him that way, but they all wanted to be the puppets behind the new leader. They couldn't agree.  
  
As Harry stepped off the dance floor, he glanced around. There was a flash of white hair from beside Malfoy. Harry smiled. He was only surprised that it had taken Ninian this long to find Malfoy.  
  
Ninian's glare at him wasn't unexpected. He had been one of the most persistent werewolves behind the old leader, too physically infirm from ancient wounds to fight himself, but content in his position. He didn't like it that Harry barely listened to him.  
  
Harry paused when he saw Malfoy's expression, though.  _I thought he was too smart to listen to Ninian's rumor-mongering._  
  
Which left the possibility that he had some reason of his own for being against Harry.  
  
Harry sighed. This meant more complications than he had looked for, and he would probably have to devote some attention and emotions to Malfoy that he had counted on being able to divert to his pack and Thornsberry instead.   
  
But he could feel a smile working its way across his face even as he considered that. Since when had complications ever deterred him? Defeating Voldemort by taking down his Horcuxes had been pretty damn complicated, but he had managed it. Sure, other people had helped him and he'd been lucky, but if his time as the leader of a werewolf pack had taught him anything, it was that he should take advantage of any help people and luck could offer. He would use it more effectively than if he stood around saying that he wasn't the Chosen One and he couldn't do anything.  
  
He strode towards the table where Ninian and Malfoy sat. Ninian sat up when he saw him, and assumed a pious expression. Harry didn't roll his eyes, but not because of social rules. He just wasn't stupid enough to let Ninian on to what he suspected.  
  
Malfoy didn't move, but this close, Harry could pick up on the stink of anger, and see the way his hand stayed on a pouch at his belt, rolling and fondling something. Harry thought it was a string of magical beads.  
  
"If you brought a gift for me," Harry said, nodding to the pouch on Malfoy's belt, "you shouldn't have. I don't require that kind of thing from wizards who negotiate with me."  
  
Malfoy gave Harry a smile that, for the first time all evening, was like the smiles Harry used to get from him. Harry smiled back. He couldn't help it. Malfoy might think that Harry was mocking him with the return smile, but he would have to think that and deal with it.  
  
"But what about from werewolves?" Malfoy whispered. "Or centaurs? Or dryads?" He looked around the feast with a flicker of his eyes. "You seem to have gathered quite the group of magical creatures here. How would the Ministry react to that? Do they even know? Or are they waiting to be informed by someone who could come here and convince them?"  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, Harry could see that Ninian had scrambled prudently away. He couldn't blame him. Injecting himself into the contest that was going on between Harry and Malfoy, a contest years old, wasn't a smart idea.  
  
"They know what they need to know," Harry said, because he knew that the combination of the mysterious answer and the flat tone would infuriate Malfoy.  
  
" _Do_ they?" Malfoy was on his feet, moving around the bench. His legs were long and graceful, his hands likewise. "What would happen if someone told them more?"  
  
His face was almost pink, his hand, still on the pouch on his belt, shaking. Harry wasn't surprised. Dryad wine was notorious for loosening the tight holds that someone kept on their emotions, making the feelings sweep through you as freely as the winds in a forest. And no one could keep as tight a rein on themselves as Malfoy had been for years, Harry thought, without sometimes making their hearts explode.  
  
"I don't know," Harry said. "I suppose you could tell them, and we'd both find out." He held out a hand. "But in the meantime, I'll take the gift you're so eager to give me."  
  
Malfoy gave a shaky laugh and tore the pouch open. "Take it and  _welcome_ ," he said, and dragged out the glittering ring of crystal beads.  
  
Harry only had time to see that much, that it was made of the small, round crystal balls, before they got flung at his head. They shimmered with a savage magic.  
  
 _Well, my magic is savage, too,_ Harry thought, and calmly put up his hand to catch them.


	5. Savage the Magic

The magic that rang through Harry when he caught those crystal beads and clasped them in his palm was certainly wild enough to qualify as savage. He found himself bending at the waist, gasping with the effort of containing it.  
  
It wanted to attack his mind; he knew that as soon as he spoke to it in the depths of his being. It wanted to fill his senses with darkness and then madness. It wanted to make him gallop in different directions, laughing and singing and waving his arms. It would bewilder him, ensnare him, and drag him down. It could make any human fall out of touch with reality in a dozen different ways, no longer able to trust eyes or ears or sense of touch.  
  
Any  _human_.  
  
And it did nothing to the sense of smell.  
  
Harry straightened up, gasping again. He felt something melting down the center of his palm, and opened his hand to see what it was. One of the crystal beads was gone from the bracelet, dissolved like ice in front of a fire; the others had shifted together to replace it. Harry nodded to himself and flung the bracelet back in Malfoy’s direction.  
  
Malfoy caught it without flinching away from it. His eyes, motionless and locked, stayed on Harry’s face. Harry shrugged at him. “A good trap,” he said, and heard his voice come out hoarse. Well, fine. That was the way he sounded after a good wrestling session with Paracelsus, too. “Just not as likely to work on a werewolf as on someone else. You’d have to come up with something to compensate for our enhanced senses, you know.”  
  
For a second, just a second, Malfoy’s face was open, paranoid, disbelieving. Harry took a step towards him. He had been taunting Malfoy as if they were still at Hogwarts, trying to get a reaction from him, but now that he saw the reaction, he didn’t want to continue the taunting. He wanted to touch it, caress Malfoy’s face as he looked like that, promise him it would be all right if he actually acted on all the emotions Harry could smell anyway.  
  
But then Malfoy turned his head away, and said, “I think that I’ve had too much to drink. May I have an escort back to the guest quarters?”  
  
“Of course,” Harry said, and held up a hand. Lisa Northron came leaping lightly through the trees. She was blond and blue-eyed and looked the picture of health, without the scars that marked some of the others, since she was the newest member of the pack. She was also someone who supported Harry instead of trying to plot against him, and Harry thought Malfoy needed someone like that right now. “Lisa will guide you back to your rooms.”  
  
Lisa smiled at him and Malfoy, and then led Malfoy off through the trees. That left Harry and Ninian looking at each other.  
  
Harry nodded to him. “You’re more isolated than you were, you know,” he said.  
  
Ninian tensed for a second, then frowned and said, “I don’t know what you mean.”  
  
“Some of the others who thought I was a horrible leader have changed their minds.” Harry tilted his head at the centaurs and dryads nearby. A circle of them had surrounded a hefty chestnut centaur who was pawing a small hole in the ground with a sturdy hoof as he told them a story. “I’ve won willing acceptance of our presence in the Forest and our claims to the territory from the centaurs and the dryads  _both_. You had several people on your side who didn’t think I could do that. But they came this evening and told me that they’ve changed their minds, that they think I can lead the pack well now. Even if it’s not in the most conventional way,” he added delicately, and watched Ninian’s cheeks darken to purple.  
  
“I was doing nothing but  _chatting_ to the Ministry employee,” said Ninian, and showed his teeth, although he wasn’t quite foolish enough to look Harry in the eye. “You were the one who decided to throw a feast for him.”  
  
“Of course I was,” said Harry, and winked at Ninian, and turned and loped away. He knew his turned back was an invitation, and Ninian might take it. But he restrained himself with nothing more than a faint snarl and a sound of tearing at the benches.   
  
What Harry had said was true. He’d talked to a lot of people, and some of them were changing their minds, even June. His decision about Thornsberry was still irritating them, but June had looked him in the eye, grunted, and said, “Well, you achieved this. Let’s get Thornsberry here, and see if you can tame him.”  
  
Sarah and Ninian and the people who felt like them were still problems, but Harry’s pack was only large, not infinite, and he had won most of them over. They would find themselves increasingly trapped into either having to challenge him directly or give over on the complaints. Harry suspected he knew which they would choose, but that was not his problem.  
  
*  
  
Draco sat down on the bed in the guest quarters and waited until he was sure that the young werewolf who had led him here was utterly gone. Then he raised some more wards around the house and clasped his hands in front of him.  
  
He could imagine the look on Invisible Heldeson’s face if she ever found out what he had done here, today. Begging for forgiveness would make it worse. What he had to do was retrieve what had gone wrong, and quickly.  
  
His traps and artifacts probably wouldn’t work on Potter. Fine. It was true that Draco hadn’t designed them with a werewolf as the top choice among his possible victims.  
  
In fact, his cube hadn’t even worked as well as it should when Woolwine confronted him. How would he make it into something that did? What kind of artifacts could he create with werewolves in mind?  
  
Draco sighed. His thoughts were turning down the old, familiar, comforting paths of artifact-working. Which was good for his job, but not good for the challenge that confronted him now.  
  
He had fought too hard for the position he held to give it up because he had once had a rivalry with Potter. He knew that was what had caused him to react so badly. He had the pressure of the negotiator’s position that he didn’t understand why he had been picked for on his back. He had the reputation of the Unspeakables to keep up. He hadn’t done a good job of supporting that so far, either, let alone the neutrality and the lack of emotion that were supposed to come with the job.  
  
He honestly didn’t know if he could hold onto his temper and his emotions around Potter. It was dangerous, promising himself that he would, and then breaking the promise later. That would make him feel worse than if he had walked into the situation blind.  
  
 _Fine. I give myself permission to act as dignified as I can, but still snap at him and act weary with his antics. That might prevent another outburst like the one I had earlier._  
  
Draco relaxed even thinking about that, which meant it was the right path to pursue. And he would say nothing more to Ninian, either, until he knew whether it was actually safe to do so. He had thought Potter was unaware of a lot of the undercurrents in his pack, but it was obvious  _now_ that he wasn’t, and it might be dangerous to try and manipulate another werewolf against him until Draco knew if that werewolf was really strong.  
  
 _And am I here to manipulate werewolves against him, anyway? Am I here to make him lose his position? I know that someone wanted to bring me into this mess for more reasons than just persuading Potter not to adopt Thornsberry, but they never told me why. They’re using me as a pawn, not a trusted partner. I have no reason to go along with them unless they choose to explain._  
  
Draco smiled and leaned back against his pillows. All was well. He would pursue his stated purpose for now, and if the Ministry representative who had to be behind this, whoever they were, wanted to contact him and explain why he should do more than his obvious mission, they could. Otherwise, he would do that obvious mission.  
  
 _Face the job in front of you, and do it safely._ That was one thing Invisible Heldeson had taught him as well, when she lectured in front of the small class containing Draco and a few other trainee Unspeakables.  _The artifacts we tend are beyond price, but we also need the brains to work with them. A trained mind is worth its weight in artifacts._  
  
The purposes of the Unspeakables would not be served if Draco died out here trying to lead a werewolf rebellion against Potter. And he didn’t care about the purposes of any other Ministry Department.  
  
He rearranged a few of the artifacts to be under his pillow instead of on his belt, and fell asleep, and slept well.  
  
*  
  
“Unspeakable Malfoy. Would you like to discuss the business that brought you now, or wait until I have a full complement of the pack assembled?”  
  
Draco paused for a second with his hand on the tree in front of him. The same werewolf who had guided him back to his house last night had met him this morning and led him in much the same way, twisting and turning back and forth among the roots. Draco had expected to see the tables still there, covered with food. None of the werewolves he’d seen had seemed much interested in cleaning up after themselves.  
  
But instead, there was only a single round table, shaped of oak in a way that indicated it had probably been Transfigured instead of carved. Potter was seated at it, with a large breakfast in front of him. Disbelieving, Draco looked at pots of butter and some kind of thick fruit spread, piles of bangers and bowls of what looked like porridge, neatly arranged kippers on a plate that Potter was just finishing off, and cups of foaming milk.  
  
He supposed they might make the fruit spread themselves, even the butter and the milk if they kept cows, but this stuff all looked too neat for the werewolves living in the wilderness that he had seen on his first steps into the Forest. He looked into Potter’s eyes, and asked, “Do you have this large a breakfast every morning?”  
  
Potter smiled. “No. Like the feast last night, most of this is in honor of you.” He waved his hand over the plates. “But I do try and make sure that we have food on hand in case guests come. And some of my people aren’t as infamous as I am. They can go into Diagon Alley to buy food and not attract attention. Now, come on. You must be hungry.”  
  
Draco decided he had nothing to lose by complying with that indirect order. He walked forwards and sat down in front of Potter, who began to pick up a plate and glass. “Which do you prefer, tea or milk or pumpkin juice?” he asked, glancing at Draco. “I’m afraid that we don’t have any coffee this time. Periwinkle drank it before she got it back to camp. Next time, I’m not going to let her be the one to buy it, no matter how much she begs.”  
  
“You’re going to serve me with your own two hands?” Draco blurted.  
  
Potter cocked his head a little. “Ah. You thought we were  _that_ kind of werewolf. I don’t mind doing things like this. I just mind fighting bloody challenges to the death and abiding by all sorts of stupid rules all the time. Those rules aren’t traditional or anything. How could they be, when werewolves have mostly lived as outcasts from wizarding society, and not in organized packs? They’re human idealizations of the way that wolves live.” He grinned. “With, somehow, the constant disease and lack of hunting success and familial relationships in the pack conveniently forgotten most of the time.”  
  
Draco sat down hard. “I’ll take pumpkin juice,” he said. He could use the touch of familiarity in what was rapidly becoming the strangest situation he’d ever been involved in. “And porridge, and salt if you have it.”  
  
Potter nodded, and exchanged the plate for a bowl. Draco watched his hands as he ladled this and poured that. He didn’t have exceedingly sharp or long nails, the way Greyback and Ninian had. He must have settled into his body without spending large amounts of time close to his beast.  
  
“There,” Potter said, and pushed the bowl and the cup across the table to Draco. “You can test it for poison if you want. I don’t mind.”  
  
Draco spent some more time staring. Potter just sat there and beamed at him. Draco waved his wand and tested a few spells for hexes, not poison. As Potter had said, there was nothing like that on any of the food.  
  
Draco began to eat. The porridge was decent enough with a little salt, the pumpkin juice fresh. He let one compensate for the other, while he studied Potter and tried to determine what had changed for him between last night and this morning. Draco had made a decision, yes, but only in the privacy of his own head. And no matter what had changed since Harry Potter became a werewolf, Draco refused to think that he had become a passable Legilimens.  
  
 _He doesn’t have to. Not when he can read your smell._  
  
Draco stiffened up. How could he forget that, when it had eaten at his mind since Ninian had been the one to explain it to him? But he had forgotten it. Perhaps Potter had sensed Draco’s resolve, after all, and was treating him like this to…  
  
To what?  
  
“Do forgive me,” said Potter, bowing his head a little. Draco looked up at him and blinked. Potter had a hand resting on the table, open, as if he wanted to show Draco that he wasn’t secretly sharpening his claws or clutching his wand. “I thought you were the same boy I knew at Hogwarts, with just a veneer of polish. I could smell how angry you wanted to let yourself get. I thought I could bring out that boy if I teased you. That way, I would understand you better, and the negotiations would go in a way that was favorable to my pack.”  
  
He leaned forwards intently, his green eyes so bright that Draco felt an uncomfortable little shiver of strange emotion travel up his spine. Well, he didn’t know what it was, so it seemed unlikely Potter could figure it out from his scent. “But I see you’ve really changed. You want to be professional, and you didn’t like it when I forced you to react. Sorry. I won’t do that again.”  
  
Draco cleared his throat with difficulty. He hadn’t expected the apology, but he ought to have, he thought. Potter would do nothing that wasn’t  _utterly unpredictable,_ after all. “It wasn’t professional to throw that bracelet at you.”  
  
“No,” said Potter, but his mouth quirked a little. “But that was the first time all night I saw someone I recognized in your face. So I didn’t mind it.”  
  
Draco shut his eyes and drew in a long, slow breath. Well. He had made his decision. He would act in a way that benefited the Unspeakables and let him maintain his dignity. Potter had changed things from what Draco had thought he would be doing, of course. But that was what Potter did. Draco would have to go along with the new status quo and do it in a way that could ensure he would still serve the Unspeakables’ purposes.  
  
Which were, currently, for him to succeed and get out alive, not do anything else.  
  
“I would prefer it if you didn’t do something like that again.” Draco looked at his porridge. Potter’s eyes were unsettling. If he had to be this honest, he didn’t want to look into them. “I worked—hard for my position. I want the official title, the official robes, the sensation of being an Unspeakable even in the middle of the Forbidden Forest. I know that you might not understand, but that’s what I want.”  
  
Potter was silent for so long that Draco thought he might also have to negotiate for good treatment. When he looked up, though, Potter was nodding thoughtfully.   
  
“So you really have changed,” he said. “You’ve grown up, and become someone who takes things like that seriously.”  
  
“I always was, Potter,” Draco muttered. “I always wanted your respect.” That cost him nothing to admit. He very rarely thought about his old self before the Unspeakables now. It could be dangerous to do so, anyway.  
  
“But before, it was respect based on your family name and your father,” Potter said simply. “This time, it’s something you’ve worked hard for. Fine.” He cocked his head to the side, the most animal-like gesture Draco had seen him make yet. “And I ask that you respect that I can handle Thornsberry and tame him into my pack. I wouldn’t be setting up to adopt him if I thought I couldn’t. I would consider the people I already have a responsibility to first.”  
  
Draco waited. But Potter didn’t move, didn’t take things back, didn’t laugh at him, didn’t apologize for insulting him. He just waited.  
  
After a few, stunned moments, Draco understood. Potter didn’t think he should apologize for explaining his view of the past as he saw it. It was a fact to him that Draco hadn’t deserved respect before, and a fact that now he did.  
  
Draco would just have to go along with that.  
  
“That’s what you’re here to convince me of, isn’t it?” he asked, and picked up his spoon again. “But I prefer not to discuss business over breakfast. Wait until I’m done.”  
  
Astonishingly, Potter sat back, and did.


	6. Negotiate the Dance

“Why do you think that you can tame Thornsberry more than any other werewolf can?”  
  
Potter grinned. They were in the middle of a small clearing with a cottage tucked into it, which seemed to be where Potter slept. Other than having sturdier stone walls and some more flowers around it, Draco couldn’t see much difference between it and the house that formed his guest quarters. He supposed if any werewolf would want a sickeningly Gryffindor and rose-covered home, it would be Potter.  
  
They sat on long, carefully carved wooden benches in front of the house that Draco recognized as imitations of the ones in the Great Hall of Hogwarts. Potter turned towards him now, slinging a casual foot around so he was straddling the bench.  
  
“Because I’m the kind of werewolf that could make someone into a Scion if I bit them,” said Potter, his eyes very green. “And that ought to mean I can take someone else’s Scion and hold onto him and turn him into a different kind of werewolf.”  
  
Draco stared at Potter. That had not been the answer he’d anticipated, and it wrongfooted him to the extent that he wasn’t sure he could continue the line of questioning.  
  
“You’re too honest,” he muttered at last, knowing his scent had already given him away anyway, and he needed an explanation for his silence. “I thought you would dance around and give me a load of bollocks at first.”  
  
Potter shrugged lightly. “Maybe you have time for that, in the Ministry. I don’t.”  
  
“Because you have members of your pack challenging you all the time?” Draco luxuriated in the freedom to fold his arms. “It doesn’t sound like you should be adopting Thornsberry at all, if you can’t control your own pack.”  
  
“You met the ones who think they can find an outside ally and take the pack from me, sure,” Potter said, his nostrils flaring briefly as something crashed behind Draco in the forest. Draco refused to turn and look. “But there are plenty of others who are perfectly happy to lead their lives and occasionally do something I ask.”  
  
“ _Occasionally_?” Draco had to ask. Potter had seemed pretty bloody involved in the lives of the other werewolves, from what Draco had seen last night. Convincing a bunch of werewolves, who had been wizards and prejudiced against other magical beings, to welcome centaurs and dryads among them would have taken a lot of work.  
  
“Some times more than others,” Potter said, unaffected. “For example, I had to spend a lot of time arguing with them that it was going to be all right to have a Ministry representative sniffing around here. I reminded them that you don’t have as strong a nose as we do.”  
  
Draco stared silently at him. “How literal was your metaphor?” he finally asked, and let his hand fall casually to his wand. “If you mean to turn me into a werewolf, then you should know I have methods to resist that kind of thing.”  
  
“How deep is your paranoia?” Potter gave something that could have been a smile if a smile normally showed that many teeth. “I was explaining the kind of thing I said to my werewolves. I know that you’re not here to find out all our secrets and stir up changes in our way of life—although I had my doubts when I saw you talking to Ninian last night. I know that you’re here to persuade us not to take Thorsnberry. That was all I meant.”  
  
“I didn’t mean to stir up rebellion,” said Draco. Potter sounded more serene than he did at the moment, but that wasn’t to be helped. “I thought it would be a useful means of undermining and distracting you.”  
  
Potter waved a hand. “And you were irritated with me, and willing to do what you could to strike back at me without it being direct. I understand. I shouldn’t have picked at you the way I did.”  
  
 _His nose gives him an unfair advantage._ Draco couldn’t tell what he was projecting to Potter now, but at least he could be poised and calm on the outside. That it was for his own satisfaction more than anything else didn’t lessen the importance of it. “Fine. I do question, though, how someone with more than one person plotting behind his back and resenting his leadership is going to have the time to devote to Thornsberry.”  
  
Potter grinned. “It’s not so much time—not at first. It’s power. I have to overwhelm Thorsnberry’s senses and convince him that he’ll submit to me. Then I can take longer to actually change him from Fenrir Greyback’s Scion into someone who will go along and get along with me.”  
  
Draco frowned and lifted one of the artifacts, a long, thin whip of silver leather, off his belt. He made sure that Potter could see him doing it and track every movement if he wanted to. “Do you mind if I use this? It’ll help me get a better sense of your magical power. You don’t feel stronger than Fenrir Greyback, and right now, I don’t know how you would overpower his influence.”  
  
“You don’t trust what anyone says much, do you?” But Potter sounded as though he was choking back a laugh. He held his hands out to the sides. “I don’t know how much your artifact will tell you. I mean power in a different way. But sure, go ahead.”  
  
No one else had ever been this calm about letting Draco use one of his artifacts on them, even Unspeakables who knew exactly what they did. Of course, that might also come from knowing what these artifacts had done  _before_ Draco got hold of them. This particular whip, for instance, had been able to cause despair to any person it flayed.  
  
Draco held back one more instant, taking in Potter’s wide-open hands and gaze, before he nodded and cracked the whip.  
  
It curled around Potter’s right wrist, his wand hand as Draco remembered from school, and for a second, Draco’s senses flooded with light and color. He would be able to sense Potter’s strength from this. Most people felt like either heat, light, or a combination of both. The colors were only temporary, like a Portkey, signaling the transition from the whip touching someone to it telling him the truth.  
  
Except, this time, the colors didn’t vanish. They went on building, complicated swirls of white and purple and blue collecting like the tumbled layers of a kaleidoscope, reaching and turning and falling on each other every time Draco thought he had them under control and could analyze them. He began to panic, a bit. Was something going wrong because he had used the whip on a werewolf instead of a wizard? He had never tested this before.  
  
Perhaps he had been naïve to assume that Potter was still a wizard. Draco hadn’t seen him cast a spell since he’d been here.  
  
But then the colors broke apart, and the familiar sensations of heat and light poured through instead. Draco felt as though he was standing inside a close little room in front of a fire that wouldn’t let him get away from it. He held up his hands to protect himself against the assault, instinctively, and the whip pulled Potter’s wrist with it, bringing his palm closer to Draco. Draco shuddered from the stinging warmth that hit his face.  
  
“I think that’s enough for now.”  
  
Draco jerked. Potter had unwound the whip from his wrist and coiled it back in Draco’s lap; it must have been him, since Draco knew he hadn’t done it, and the artifact wouldn’t have done it on its own without a degree of dangerous independence that Draco made sure to introduce in none of his projects. Potter was also holding his hand, without the sensation of heat this time, peering into his face with gentle, concerned eyes.  
  
“I don’t understand all the images I got from your magic,” Draco murmured to him, shaking his head.  
  
Potter’s smile widened, and he nodded. “That would make sense. I don’t think most wizard artifacts are able to cope with werewolf magic. And I’m the most powerful werewolf that a lot of people have ever seen or heard of.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth, and then paused. “That’s the most arrogant thing I’ve heard anyone say,” he murmured.  
  
Potter looked as though he was enjoying a private joke. “I thought you  _did_ think I was arrogant.”  
  
Draco shrugged away the reminder of his past self. He might have been forced to leave that past self behind, but now that he had, he wanted to be what he had achieved instead of who he had been born. “Things change. But you can’t know that you’re the most powerful werewolf in the world.”  
  
“Did I say that? Typical Unspeakable.” Potter put his hands together in a manner that reminded Draco of Invisible Heldeson, but he knew it was a parody and not serious, and he was further irritated that Potter should remind him of Heldeson anyway. “Not listening to the words we ordinary people say, but the ones you want to be true, because they’ll mean that you can take away powerful things from us in case we do something wrong with them.”  
  
Draco did not choose to address the question of whether Unspeakables should leave dangerous artifacts drifting around the world, either. He didn’t see why Potter should control the conversation. “You can’t be ordinary and the most powerful werewolf—that most people know of at the same time.”  
  
*  
  
Harry sighed. He would never have thought it, but he would have to say that he missed Malfoy’s sense of humor. It hadn’t been very good, and he had never liked jokes that were directed at him, but at least he had  _recognized_ a joke.  
  
“I’m a powerful werewolf,” he said, “just like I’m a powerful wizard. But you don’t rule the world because you’re powerful. You don’t create great art or become a great Auror just because you have power.”  
  
Malfoy was staring at him as though that line of thinking was  _also_ completely alien. Harry twitched back a growl in his throat. The Unspeakables had had a pretty good try at completely reshaping Malfoy, it seemed. The way that some werewolves would bite Scions and transform them for the mere pleasure of creating someone else in their image, instead of letting them be their own person.  
  
 _And what are you going to do with Thornsberry?_  
  
Harry grinned. He had once called that voice his Hermione-voice, but he knew now that it was partially his own conscience. And sarcasm that no one else heard couldn’t hurt them.  
  
 _Thornsberry is different because he has no chance to live in a regular werewolf pack,_ he thought to appease his conscience, and focused on Malfoy again. “You don’t think that power should be hidden sometimes?” he asked. He knew that Lucius Malfoy had hidden some of his manipulations and interferences in the Ministry.  
  
Malfoy closed his eyes. “Magical power is different,” he said, as though reciting from a textbook. “Magical power can be used to remake artifacts and minds and the world. And it’s difficult to hide. Accidental magic can explode out of children even when they’re not trying to do anything in particular. We cannot estimate the strength of our own desires. We cannot understand what in our minds gives rise to magic, or how our thoughts interact with our magical cores. Power will emerge, however much we try to deny it.”  
  
“I don’t think it’s different,” said Harry. He had never read the textbook that Malfoy was quoting, and he saw no reason he should have to be impressed by it. “I think that you can be ordinary if you’re powerful. If you just use it a little and not a lot, or if you only want to be one thing. I mean, if I’d stayed an Auror, I might never have been great. I could have just solved regular cases and captured a few people, or something.”  
  
Malfoy’s eyes popped open, and he stared at Harry strangely. “But your magical power is what let you take control of the pack.”  
  
“You weren’t here for the duels,” said Harry, swinging a leg and grinning at him. “How do  _you_ know? I ought to tell you right now that Ninian is a biased source.”  
  
Malfoy put a hand to his head. Apparently Harry was giving him a headache. “There’s no way that you could have taken leadership of the pack, even in an unconventional way, unless you somehow defeated the older leader.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “And of course cleverness would play no part in that. Or brute strength. Or setting the situation up to my advantage.”  
  
Malfoy frowned and didn’t answer. Harry thought they had wandered far from the main point, so he returned to it. “Anyway. You said you think I have a lot of power, and I told you that, and that I would be able to hold onto Thornsberry and convince him not to attack anyone. So me having a lot of power ought to convince you further that it’s possible. Why not?” he added, because Malfoy was shaking his head again.  
  
“I don’t know how to interpret what I saw through the whip in the way that I would interpret an ordinary wizard’s powers.” Malfoy’s mouth was turned down again. “And Thornsberry isn’t here, and I don’t think you’ve adopted any other Scion into your pack, so I don’t know how you will convince me that you can handle Thornsberry.”  
  
“No other Scion, but there are some people who wouldn’t mind helping me with a demonstration,” Harry said, and called, “Lisa!” through the forest.  
  
It made Malfoy jump. Harry shrugged an apology at him. He knew that his voice had changed since he’d become a werewolf; Hermione had told him it was deeper and fuller. Ron had said that he couldn’t describe how, but it was different. Harry only knew that his pack could hear him when he called their names in the Forest, but he thought that might be down to their changed ears as much as his changed voice.  
  
Lisa appeared through the trees a few minutes later, looking between him and Malfoy. When she seemed to realize he didn’t want her to guide Malfoy anywhere, she rocked back on her heels and turned her attention to him instead.  
  
“Can you help me with a demonstration?” Harry asked, smiling at her. “The kind of thing that we did when you first came into the pack and you wanted to feel like you belonged?”  
  
Lisa flushed. “Sure. But you know what reaction I had.” And she looked at Malfoy again.  
  
Harry nodded. “I know. But I don’t think that Unspeakable Malfoy is going to spread gossip about your reaction. It’s the nuances that he’s interested in, from a, uh, magical theorist perspective. And my reaction. Right?” He looked at Malfoy.  
  
“Considering that I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Malfoy, folding his arms, “I can’t tell you one way or the other what I’ll need to say about it.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “When she first came into the pack, Lisa wanted to feel a sense of belonging. She was a brand-new werewolf and she had heard that I wanted to welcome people, but the others didn’t make her feel welcome when she got here. So I reached out with the same power I’ve been telling you about, the one that could tame Thornsberry, and used it to soothe her and give her a sense of home. That’s what I’ll be doing now.”  
  
Malfoy frowned further. He really needed to smile more, Harry thought, or his face was going to freeze that way. “Go ahead,” he said at last.  
  
Harry nodded and turned to Lisa. She swallowed and knelt down in front of him. Harry could hear her heartbeat, so quick that he reached out and gently laid a hand on her neck to calm it down. Lisa nodded and nearly ducked her head, then remembered she needed to keep eye contact with him for this. Her lips stretched in a faintly sickly smile as she looked up at him.  
  
Harry leaned down towards her, concentrating. He felt the power springing to life and spreading out around him, the same intensity that he had felt when he battled the old pack leader, the same thing he felt whenever anyone battled him, the same heart-stopping warmth that he could summon when he needed to calm down someone who had been injured. He spread his hands and collected the warmth between them, then pressed them slowly inwards to rest on Lisa’s shoulders.  
  
It was like clutching a blanket of the sun; he could feel the heat better than he could feel Lisa’s skin. But at the same time, he could feel her heartbeat, slamming against his own jaw now, and her emotions sliding through him, warmth and uncertainty and shyness and wonder, and her eyes staring into his own whirled and became the ones he was staring out of. Everything was liquid, in flux. He understood enough of Lisa to know what she needed.  
  
 _Hush,_ he whispered, perhaps aloud. He could not project the thought into Lisa’s mind, but he said it with the most powerful body language he could muster, the language of Lisa’s body. His hands rubbed, his magic leaned out and embraced her, and their unblinking eyes were a symbol of connection now instead of challenge.  _It’s all right._  
  
Lisa panted harshly and dropped her head forwards, breaking the eye contact, her face flushed. Harry withdrew from it more slowly, letting the warmth go as he spread his hands. But a second later, he made sure that he had helped Lisa to her feet. Sometimes breaking away like that could hurt the pack member as much as the pack leader.  
  
“Are you all right?” he whispered.  
  
“Yes,” said Lisa, and cleared her throat. “I didn’t moan this time, did I?”  
  
Harry laughed softly. “I honestly didn’t notice.” He turned to ask Malfoy if she had.  
  
But Malfoy was gone, the trampled grass marking where he had fled towards the guest quarters. Harry stared, then snarled in irritation. How was Malfoy supposed to judge whether Thornsberry could find a home in the pack if he just ran from every demonstration of Harry’s power?  
  
He could have sent Lisa to find out what was going on, but he preferred to do it himself. He sent her back to the weeding she’d been doing and stalked in the direction of the guest quarters.


	7. Resist The Temptation

Draco raced into his guest quarters and locked the door behind him with a charm. Then he took one of his artifacts from his belt, a glass key that would only look delicate to undiscerning eyes, and aimed it at the door. When he murmured the trigger word, Invisible Heldeson’s name, the key glowed. A second later, the door glowed in answer.   
  
 _There._ Anyone who tried to break in now would have some surprises so nasty that they wouldn’t persist.  
  
Draco flopped back on his bed, shaking. Then he buried his head in his hands and wrestled his emotions back under control. He could do this, he  _could._ He  _knew_ he could. He had been through similar exercises in Unspeakable training, where the instructors would inflict intense illusions on them to stir up anger or fear or excitement, and then see how fast they could get themselves calm again.  
  
A few deep breaths, a few soothing rubs of his hands over his temples, and Draco knew that his face had stopped flushing. He could speak steadily, if someone asked him to. He could fold his hands in his lap, and they weren’t shaking.  
  
But the reaction of his body below the waist was harder to get back under control.  
  
Draco closed his eyes and counted breaths. He knew he was hard, but that did not matter. What mattered was the passage of air in and out of his lungs, the way that his chest heaved, the precise placement of the creases in his robes beneath his hands.  
  
Slowly, slowly, both his excitement and his erection shrank. He could still think of Potter forcing the young werewolf to her knees and looking into her eyes; he had to. That might be important to the way that Potter intended to tame Thornsberry, and thus to the report Draco had to make to the Unspeakables. But he had to handle this without undue interest on his part.  
  
There should never have  _been_ interest in the first place, except the cool kind that any Unspeakable would show on encountering a new branch of magic for the first time. The ability of werewolves to tame werewolves was new. Draco could admit that. It was interesting. He could admit that, too. Until now, he had thought that only a werewolf who bit someone could tame and soothe them like that, and that was if they made a Scion the way Greyback had made Thornsberry.  
  
Potter’s ability to tame a werewolf he hadn’t turned—as far as Draco knew—did make it more likely that he could take charge of Thornsberry. But he wouldn’t make assumptions. He would turn the matter over in a report to Invisible Heldeson and see what she thought of it.  
  
Someone knocked on his door.  
  
Draco sighed. He wanted to leave the locking charms up, but the magic he had used through the key could harm the werewolf who tried to open the door, and the last thing Draco wanted to risk was a diplomatic incident. “I’m here,” he called, and used the key to reverse both kinds of magic he had cast on the door.  
  
He didn’t get up to open it, and after long seconds, as though the person on the other side was waiting for him to do that, it swung open on its own. Draco made sure to render his expression as bland and indifferent as possible.  
  
That became a little harder to do when Potter entered the room and leaned against the wall, gazing at Draco as if he was the most interesting thing in the universe.  
  
Draco lifted his chin higher and higher, showing off his throat. Wasn’t that supposed to be a submissive gesture? Potter might pay attention to that instead of the quickening of blood in Draco’s body, or the hormones surging through it.  
  
“I thought we were trying to get over acting like our childish selves,” Potter said. “Running away without saying a word, just because you were disgusted by what you witnessed, isn’t acting like much of an adult.”  
  
Draco felt himself flush again, and he opened his mouth, not sure whether he would speak with absolute politeness or not. But at the same moment, he saw Potter lift his head and sniff.  
  
He gave Draco an incredulous stare.  
  
Draco’s flush had deepened to the point where his cheeks hurt. But he would still try to save what little face he could. “I agree that it was unprofessional,” he said, and thank Merlin, his voice was calm. “But that just makes it all the more obvious I shouldn’t have been chosen for this task. Let me go back to the Ministry, and they’ll choose someone else to send instead, someone who will be better for it.” He made to stand up.  
  
Potter reached out and touched his arm. Draco winced. The hand felt hotter than it should, and he knew it wasn’t because a werewolf’s skin was always warmer than a human being’s. The extra heat shimmered in Potter’s eyes, as well. Draco dreaded the words that would come out next.  
  
“Wait.”  
  
Draco waited, glad to have a clear course to follow. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so fucking relieved to hear an order; Potter wasn’t Invisible Heldeson and shouldn’t have any right of command over him. But this day had gone from bad to worse, and all within the span of one hour.  
  
“I was trying to show you, through Lisa, that I have the magic to make a werewolf feel calm and cooperative and part of the pack,” said Potter, taking his hand back and prowling a short distance away. He didn’t look as though he was leaving, though. “That’s the magic that will tame Thornsberry.”  
  
“Ex-expecting me to believe that, when you have people like Ninian running around who disdain you, is ridiculous,” Draco said. “If you really had it, you’d use it on them, and break through the opposition.”  
  
“I won’t use it on someone who’s not willing.”  
  
“And you expect Thornsberry to simply be  _grateful_ about it?”  
  
Potter smiled a little. “No, but I do think that he would welcome a place in a pack, and that’s enough reason for me to try. If he challenges me or argues with me or can’t be overcome by my power, then I’d allow the Ministry to take him back.” He shrugged when Draco went on staring at him, as if he didn’t understand what the problem was. “I don’t know for sure if I can work. I’m just mostly sure that it will.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “This is bigger than me. You need to get someone from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement here, someone who can tell you if that’s even legal—”  
  
“But I thought you were supposed to persuade me out of keeping Thornsberry, or trying to claim him.” Potter took a single, intent step forwards. “Why would the reason I think I can control him matter?”  
  
“Stop,” said Draco. Potter hadn’t actually taken another step towards him, but he knew what would probably happen if he did.  
  
“I wasn’t moving.”  
  
Draco flashed Potter a glance that he knew was hostile. He didn’t fucking  _care_. He had already been embarrassed and cornered often enough that he was thinking about walking away from the whole thing. Some of the Unspeakables received training similar to the Aurors’; they could figure out from their knowledge of intrigue in the Ministry who would have suggested Draco for this ridiculous negotiation. They could talk to Potter. They could figure out whether Thornsberry would be susceptible to his magic. The only thing Draco knew for sure was that someone else could do this.  
  
“I don’t know why you reacted to my magic,” Potter continued, calmly. “Only werewolves are supposed to, and it works best with werewolves who’ve already joined the pack and accepted my authority.”  
  
“Then I  _wonder_ why you’re so confident that it’ll work with Thornsberry,” Draco had to interrupt.  
  
“But I didn’t mean for it to embarrass you,” said Potter. “You’re not the first to react that way, either, even if you are the first non-werewolf. That’s one reason Lisa didn’t want to do it in front of you.”  
  
Draco stared at Potter with unblinking eyes, but only ended up blinking himself when Potter continued being blandly uncomprehending. “Then why did you ask her to do it in front of me? Do you enjoy subjecting your pack to tests of their loyalty or something?”  
  
Potter shook his head. “Of course not. But I did want you to see what weapon I’m going to use against Thornsberry.”  
  
Draco closed his eyes. “And it also turned out to be a weapon you could use against  _me_.”  
  
“I never meant to embarrass you. I won’t use it against you.”  
  
Draco opened his eyes at once, hearing those words. And yes, it hadn’t been his imagination. They came from closer. Potter had moved towards him and was standing there with heavy-lidded eyes, staring at Draco.  
  
“Stay away from me,” Draco whispered, and waved his wand in a single half-circle, a variant of a Summoning Charm he’d stumbled across in an old book and perfected. Every single thing that belonged to him flew over to him, except the belongings he’d put in the locked and warded trunk. That only rattled. With a muttered hiss, Draco cast the Dissolving Charm on the side of the trunk, and then he really did have everything he’d brought with him. “Stay the fuck away from me,” he added, when Potter looked as if he would take another step towards him.  
  
“Such harsh words.” Potter put a hand flat on his chest in what looked like mockery, but he was watching Draco with surprising intensity. “I’m wounded.”  
  
“You’re not,” said Draco, and discovered that there was bitter saliva on his lips. He shook his head and turned away from Potter. “You can call someone else out here to explain your theories to them. I’m done.”  
  
As he moved past Potter, Potter raised a single hand and said, “Please. Listen to me. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I never had a reason to think that you would have that reaction to my magic because only werewolves do. Will you please listen to me?”  
  
Draco glared at Potter. Potter glared back.  
  
And the scent of his magic still hung around him—it must be strong if Draco’s unsophisticated nose could smell it—laden with some of the same darkness and warmth and power that had hit Draco earlier. He had thought at the time what it would be like to be held, to be soothed, the way that Potter was holding the werewolf. He had been excited, of course he had, but the possibility of understanding and comfort was even more attractive.  
  
He didn’t know what he would do if he stayed here another moment. He was being unprofessional and rude by running, but that was nothing next to the damage that might otherwise result. He bolted for the Apparition point.  
  
*  
  
Harry lowered his hand, blinking hard. It felt as though Malfoy still stood in front of him. Well, scent could do that, and Harry had learned in the last few years to use his nose almost as much as his eyes.  
  
 _What was he so afraid of?_  
  
Harry shook his head. He was sure that it went back to what he had thought before: that the Unspeakables had  _sculpted_ Malfoy, formed and used him for their own ends. And deformed him. They had made him so embarrassed and uptight that Harry found it hard to see any trace of the boy he had once known in him.  
  
Well, okay. So both the young Malfoy and the present one were easily embarrassed. That was one way they were similar.  
  
But Harry didn’t think most Unspeakables would have fled from his magic, even so. They would have lingered to talk about it, capable of analyzing their own responses and wondering why they’d had them. Then again, most Unspeakables would have been either volunteers or here for a discernible reason. It did seem that Malfoy had no idea why he might have been chosen, and no desire to stay here and find out.  
  
“Are you being unfaithful to the attraction between us, Harry?”  
  
Paracelsus was clinging to the roof of the guest quarters, and tilting his head down so that Harry could see him through the window. Harry rolled his eyes. “You know that you’re still the only one I would invite to drink my blood, if I ever invited anyone.”  
  
“I know that. I only wanted to  _confirm_.” Paracelsus scuttled a bit closer, his fingers clinging to the wood and stone with an ease Harry thought only centipedes could match. “Why did the young Malfoy flee, then, if he didn’t fear my retribution for his infidelity?”  
  
“I don’t know exactly,” said Harry. “I only have theories, and all of them are too young to be shared.”  
  
“I love tender young things,” said Paracelsus, and paused hopefully. When Harry didn’t respond, he sighed and went on. “That may be the kind of thing I can go to the Ministry and find out. Including who assigned Malfoy to the Thornsberry case?”  
  
“You heard that, too?” Harry shook his head. “I should give up on anything remaining private in this pack, I suppose.”  
  
“You might want to consider cleaning yourself a bit before you venture back among your followers. They’ll smell the scent of arousal.”  
  
“I only touched Malfoy once,” said Harry, and sniffed at his hand a bit. No, none of the scent clung there.  
  
“I was referring to the arousal that belongs to  _you_.”  
  
Harry stared up at Paracelsus, eyes narrowed. He had been too focused on Malfoy and Lisa to think much about what he was feeling himself, but it was true that his body felt focused, his senses narrowed, the way they did when he was hunting. He normally didn’t feel it when he was human.  
  
And, well, he wouldn’t have expected to feel it with Malfoy, either. He never did with Lisa or the other werewolves that he had soothed and gave a sense of home with his power. Why for a non-werewolf?  
  
He was still musing about that when Paracelsus struck.  
  
Harry leaped aside, muscles functioning better than his brain at the moment, and Paracelsus, who had torn through the window of the guest quarters, slammed into the opposite wall, the one behind Malfoy’s bed. Harry pictured Malfoy lying there for a moment, trying to deal with a suddenly intruding vampire. He growled.  
  
“I do prefer your smell when your blood is up.” Paracelsus crouched on his haunches, eyes dilated and nostrils working hard enough that Harry was a little revolted. Then he moved in one of those blurs of speed that vampires were famous for.  
  
Harry had already chosen where he wanted Paracelsus to go, and simply activated the trap with a sweep of his wand as he sprang aside. The wards on the inside of the guest quarters, not usually active because they would seal a guest into the room until a pack member released them, engaged with a hiss. Paracelsus cried out as they formed in a net of white light between the bed and the wall, curled around his limbs and his neck, and bound him to the floor.  
  
“I don’t appreciate your offer of help when it comes with conditions like this,” Harry told him, sauntering over to inspect him. Showing the weakness of fear would only cause Paracelsus to attack again. “I’ll investigate Malfoy on my own. They probably do have a strange reason for assigning him to this case, but I think we’ll find out easily enough.”  
  
Paracelsus twisted his head and hissed at him. “I have friends in the Ministry who could obstruct your search.”  
  
“That you do,” Harry agreed. “But I’m willing to overlook this attack. It’s just your way. However, if you block me, you’ll never taste my blood.”  
  
Paracelsus went motionless in that way only a vampire could, as if he had suddenly become stone. Harry waited. He had nothing to lose by holding still, and in the meantime, he could inspect the wards and make sure they didn’t need to be renewed.  
  
“You are pretending that you still have a serious offer for me?” Paracelsus whispered.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry. “If you’re strong and clever enough to take it, then I’d let you. But if you block my investigation into what’s going on with Malfoy, then I’ll be happy enough to just kill you.”  
  
Paracelsus bowed his head to the floor, between his spread hands. “Forgive me, great master. I did not mean to presume.”  
  
“You’re an idiot sometimes,” said Harry. “Do I have your promise that you won’t interfere with anything I do in the Ministry?”  
  
“You have my promise that I’ll go back to the Ministry and bring you the true information on Malfoy that it might take you months to get.”  
  
Harry raised a skeptical eyebrow.  
  
“I will,” said Paracelsus, and his eyes were as soft as the forest. “For a chance to taste your blood, I’ll do anything.”  
  
Harry considered it, then shrugged. At least he thought that Paracelsus had taken his threat to deny him his blood seriously, and so he was unlikely to interfere with the questions that Harry asked. Whether he would actually help was a different matter. “Fine. I’m going to let you go now. Attack me again right now, and we’ll consider the promise null and void.”  
  
He lifted the wards by drawing his wand down in front of him. Paracelsus rose to his feet, bowed, and leaped through the window. Harry listened until he was sure that the faint creaking of branches marked him leaving the pack’s territory altogether.  
  
Then he settled back on the bed in the guest quarters and shut his eyes. The lingering scent around him was addictive, dark, warm—the same way that Lisa had described Harry’s own power being.  
  
 _Aroused? Maybe so._  
  
 _And that just doubles the amount of questions I have to ask._


	8. Investigate the Mystery

“I do not understand why you have returned.”  
  
Draco didn’t hunch his shoulders, because even a movement like that would reveal too much to Invisible Heldeson, but he wanted to at the remote, utterly cold tone in her voice.   
  
“I returned because I was doing no good for the Unspeakables by remaining in the forest,” he said, and his voice, at least, was perfect. Just being around people that he  _knew_ couldn’t smell his emotions was improving him, he thought, doing wonders for him. “I was reacting inappropriately to the pack leader. I had not subdued my ancient rivalry for him as much as I thought. I was revealing the existence of artifacts that we had intended to keep back as weapons. I had fallen into the trap of thinking that I needed to undermine Potter and dismiss him from being pack leader, when that wasn’t my purpose at all.”  
  
Heldeson stared at him. Draco had a brief stab of envy in the back of his mind. How did she do that without conveying any emotion? If he had done it, he would have shown impatience or eagerness or scorn,  _something_.  
  
“You were indeed not there to fight with Potter or to make him lose his place as pack leader,” said Heldeson at last. “I wonder that you can admit that to me with a straight face.”  
  
Draco looked off to the side. He had wanted to hide his shame, but in doing so, he was letting down his Department in another way. An Unspeakable was dedicated to truth. He or she had to figure out what an artifact really did, not what its owner thought it did or lied about it doing, so that they could use or reshape it. Invisible Heldeson already knew something was wrong. Draco had failed to maintain the ice façade anyway. He might as well tell her and let her help him.  
  
“It was something else,” Draco whispered. “Potter could smell my emotions, and that unnerved me so much that I acted rashly.”  
  
Silence from the other side of the desk. Draco didn’t look up until Heldeson said, “You will look at me.”  
  
A simple order, at least, he knew how to obey. Draco turned his head and met her eyes.  
  
“Of course a werewolf can smell one’s emotions,” said Invisible Heldeson. “That should not have taken you so off-guard.”  
  
“Yes, Invisible,” said Draco. That was safe, both a response and a joining-in of her condemnation of himself. He knew no safer response to make than that, in fact.  
  
Heldeson gave him one searching glance, then continued. “In the meantime, we must deal with your flight. You wish to know why the Ministry chose you to use as liaison to Potter.”  
  
“Yes, Invisible.”  
  
“I have made inquiries,” said Heldeson. “It seemed strange to me as well, to take an Unspeakable away from the work that he is trained at and needed for. But I have satisfied myself that it was for a reasonable purpose. You are not to start or flush or protest if someone asks you about it. Is that understood?”  
  
“Yes, Invisible.”  
  
“You will return to the pack,” said Heldeson, standing. “Not right away, because we must give Potter time to recover from any offense he is feeling. But no later than the day after tomorrow. Do you promise this to me?”  
  
Draco nodded and rose. “Yes, Invisible.” He moved out of her office. He was always dismissed when Invisible Heldeson stood up in that particular way.  
  
In the meantime, he had other things that he should do. Such as looking at the artifacts that were being recently reshaped and tested by other Unspeakables like himself, and seeing if any of them were available to test.  
  
Especially any that would cover his scent.  
  
*  
  
“Your Malfoy grows more interesting the more information I find on him.”  
  
Harry felt his muscles tense despite himself, but he only raised a hand when Ron drew his wand. His friends didn’t often visit the pack. When they did, they were always on edge—not from Harry, but because of the Forbidden Forest’s reputation. Harry had enough trouble keeping them from drawing their wands at every sound. It was probably going to be worse now, he thought.  
  
“It’s okay, Ron,” he said, standing up and moving away from the little table in front of his house that held the remains of biscuits and tea. “Paracelsus and I have an understanding.”  
  
“He’s a bloody  _vampire,_ mate,” Ron said, but put his wand down and picked up his tea. Next to him, Hermione had one hand on his wrist and a tolerant smile for Harry. She would react swiftly enough if Paracelsus came out of the shadows, though, Harry knew.  
  
He nodded back to them and went to stand at the edge of the trees. Paracelsus had concealed himself well enough that Harry couldn’t see him at first, not until the wind turned and told his nose where to look. Paracelsus was pressed against a tree with double trunks, elegantly slanted so that he took part in the shadows much more than he would otherwise.  
  
“Malfoy’s interesting?” Harry asked, lounging against the nearest trunk of the double tree himself and keeping an eye out for sticks and stones and dirt clods and all the other things that a vampire familiar with the Forbidden Forest could potentially turn into deadly weapons.  
  
“Yes,” said Paracelsus. He pressed one hand against his mouth as if to cover his fangs, as if he had never threatened to drink Harry’s blood. That was another bit of his playacting, and Harry stood there patiently until Paracelsus dropped his hand and gave it up. “The order to send him to the pack didn’t originate in the Department of Mysteries.”  
  
“Interesting, yes,” Harry said. He had learned a long time ago never to react too much to anything Paracelsus did, outside of an actual attempt to attack him. Too much eagerness only led Paracelsus to taunt and withhold information. Harry had decided that he couldn’t help it, because he was an idiot, and idiots were like that. “I wonder why a Department outside the Unspeakables would have such interest in Malfoy. Or perhaps I should be questioning why they want me stymied, or Thornsberry an outcast. Thank you for confirming that.”  
  
He took a step back, opening his mouth to call Ron. He must have hit the right note of disinterest to bring out Paracelsus’s irritation, because he snapped, “It came from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. I would have  _told_  you if you had  _asked_.”  
  
“Yes, yes,” said Harry, and gave Paracelsus a smile of his own that showed no teeth. Paracelsus had used smiles with teeth as an excuse to lunge at him in the past, explaining that he had thought Harry was being threatening. “I understand. But since you can’t have tracked the rumor to a specific person this fast, I’ll thank you for what you’ve done and put my people on it.”  
  
“The office of the Minister.”  
  
Harry couldn’t hide the way he turned back or his heartbeat accelerated at that. Minister Hinsley was someone he didn’t know very well, although he had been one of the Aurors who’d trained Harry, briefly. He’d barely become Minister when Thornsberry attacked his son and was imprisoned, and although the boy hadn’t died or turned, Hinsley had dealt with the ramifications of the bite and Thornsberry’s rushed trial, which some people had criticized. And then Harry had suffered his own bite, and had had other things to worry about.  
  
“Interesting, again,” he said, since he had already revealed enough intrigue to make Paracelsus look smug, and he might as well see if he could get more out of him. “I wouldn’t have thought Hinsley had any particular grudge against me.”  
  
Paracelsus chuckled, a noise like beetles chewing through wood. “Perhaps he finds your proposal to adopt the monster who ravaged his son distasteful.”  
  
“Thornsberry didn’t turn or kill him,” said Harry, and then gave up. He didn’t really want to defend Thornsberry. He just wanted to see if it was possible to make people stop saying all werewolves were horrible because of him. “Fine. Thank you.”  
  
Paracelsus tightened his hold on the branch and leaned towards him. “You said that you would give me your blood for finding that out,” he whispered.  
  
“Did I?” Harry pretended to think it over. “No, I didn’t. I’m sure that no words like that ever crossed my lips.”  
  
Paracelsus showed his fangs, and there was no doubt about what that meant when a vampire did it. Harry only looked him in the face and didn’t move, until Paracelsus huffed at him—an extravagant gesture, with the breath it required—and turned as if to flow back into the Forest.  
  
Harry was ready for it when Paracelsus leaped away from the double-trunked tree and the trunk he’d been clutching fell towards Harry.   
  
He side-stepped and gripped the trunk at a point where it would make a good weapon to swing if Paracelsus was stupid enough to think Harry helpless because his hands were occupied. Paracelsus stood watching him, but made no attempt to come nearer. Harry nodded and heaved the trunk back, letting it crash into the earth.  
  
“Thank you for your help,” he repeated pointedly, and waited until Paracelsus had made his fangs flash again and withdrawn. Then he sighed and shuffled back to his friends, not turning his back on the forest.  
  
“I think he’s mental,” said Ron, once Harry was sitting again. The look on his face said that he wasn’t far from thinking Harry was mental, too.  
  
“My relationship with him is weird,” Harry acknowledged, reaching out and scooping up the last cinnamon biscuit. Ron would eat it, otherwise. “I know he’d rejoice to drink my blood, and some of my pack would rejoice to see me fall to him.” He licked a few crumbs off his fingers, for the pleasure of seeing Hermione wince instead of lecture him. “But not all of them.”  
  
“I don’t think you should stay here.” Hermione put her elbows on the table, then flushed and took them off. Harry knew it was something that she’d probably get scolded for at home. “Too many people dislike you, and one of them is going to attack you some dark night.”  
  
Harry waved a hand. “No, if someone wants to take control of the pack from me, they need to do it in the open. Otherwise, too many people could claim credit for it.”  
  
“But you still have a lot of resentment brewing behind you.” Hermione ate her current biscuit slowly, apparently struggling to understand. “How can you stand living in an environment like that?”  
  
“I’ve always lived in environments like that,” Harry said, thinking of Privet Drive, Hogwarts, even to some extent the Ministry. There had been plenty of people in the Auror program who were neutral on him, or only hard while they suspected that favoritism had made him a trainee, or ready to be friendly, or worshipping, but also some people who would always hate him for taking away their “glory” in the war or not killing Voldemort soon enough or some other silly thing. “I know how to survive them.”  
  
“You shouldn’t have to, is what I think Hermione is saying,” Ron pointed out.  
  
Harry nodded. “I shouldn’t have to, but this is the pack that I chose to make my stand in. And it helps that it’s so close to Hogwarts. Hogwarts still feels like home.”  
  
Hermione and Ron exchanged a glance. Harry didn’t always understand their private communicating glances since they had become a couple, but he knew this one. Harry was crazy, but they wouldn’t argue about it with him any longer.  
  
Harry smiled at them and held out the plate of biscuits. “More?”  
  
*  
  
Draco sighed and leaned back at his desk, staring at the uncoiled tube of glass in front of him. It ought to have been a simple thing to unravel. Glass held magic less well than many other items, perhaps because it broke so easily. There were only a limited set of uses the artifact could have been put to.  
  
Most of the time, he could crack these puzzles in the first five hours of having the artifact, although he didn’t always know immediately how to recreate it or beak it down and shape it to his use. But the cube that he used to light his way had been simple. This one, perhaps because of the way that its insides could reflect each other, was more complicated.  
  
The door to his office opened. Draco stilled and looked up, one hand still poised over the glass tube. It was unlikely that someone seeking to reclaim their “stolen” property would make it this far into the Department of Mysteries, but on the other hand, he had few surprises visitors.  
  
He recognized the man’s face, but vaguely. Then he recognized it fully, and stood up, bowing his head a little. “Minister Hinsley.”  
  
The man, his hair pale and his eyes paler, stood a moment looking around the office, not acknowledging Draco’s nod. Draco watched him in turn. He had a wand holster along his arm, but he showed no signs of drawing it. And he was alone.  
  
Then he turned back to Draco, and sighed, and drew up the chair that Draco kept for Unspeakables he was collaborating with. “May I talk to you, Unspeakable Malfoy?”  
  
“Yes, sir,” said Draco, and thought he succeeded in keeping the puzzlement from his voice. If Invisible Heldeson had learned there was a good reason for him being sent, something that had to do to with the Minister, he should have had no reason to visit Draco.  
  
The Minister sat down with another sigh and folded his hands on his belly, gazing at Draco. Draco just waited. Whether he was in trouble or only dealing with someone paranoid, he had come this far without showing much emotion. He would continue with a winning strategy.  
  
“I understand that you left the werewolf pack we had assigned you to spy on,” said Hinsley.  
  
“I understood that I was there as a negotiator, and not a spy,” Draco said. “I was not an effective negotiator. I was undermining the interests of my Department instead of furthering them. So I left.”  
  
“You will need to return,” said Hinsley. “There’s no one else so effective at getting under Potter’s skin. We know that. We need you to go there and rattle him, and learn what he thinks his secret is for taming Thornsberry.”  
  
“My report to Invisible Heldeson did contain that information, sir.” Draco looked at Hinsley’s left ear, since looking at his face would only confuse Draco further. “Potter showed me how he intended to hold Thornsberry, working with a packmate of his. He can use magic to calm and soothe them, and to make them feel a sense of belonging. I saw the packmate go from uncertain about participating in the demonstration in front of me to blushing and acting very—very aroused, sir.”  
  
He didn’t know how much Hinsley knew about his own arousal. He kept his mouth shut while Hinsley stared at him. Perhaps he hadn’t read the report after all, although Draco knew he had been mercilessly clear. One had to when one was a failure.  
  
“That cannot be the truth,” said Hinsley. “That is the same thing he told us in a letter he wrote to us. He was lying.”  
  
Draco blinked, once. “Why, sir?”  _Why did you send someone as negotiator when you already knew how Potter intended to do it?_  
  
“Why would he tell us the truth?” Hinsley tapped one hand sharply on his knee. “I hope that you’re not going to argue Potter is a paragon and a truth-teller, the way that some of my own people did when I suggested we plant a spy in his pack.”  
  
“Never that, sir,” said Draco, eyes firmly on the lobe of Hinsley’s ear. “But it did seem as though his magic worked the way he said it did.”  
  
 _You didn’t tell me the previous information. You sent me in blind._  
  
And why did Potter have to be rattled and undermined by someone from the Ministry, anyway? The Ministry was easily expert enough in politics to exploit the tensions in Potter’s pack.  
  
Nothing about this made sense.  
  
Draco tried to swallow and tell himself that it didn’t  _need_ to make sense. If Invisible Heldeson had investigated it and discovered information that satisfied her, then Draco needed to accept her satisfaction and act on it. She wouldn’t sacrifice one of her Unspeakables because of a mistake in another Department. She had said that trained minds were valuable.   
  
“The magic worked on you, didn’t it?”  
  
And so perhaps Hinsley had read the report. Draco looked back into the man’s face, and managed to gain strength and confidence from that look, after all. He inclined his head. “Yes, sir. I felt as though I wanted Potter’s protection and comfort.”  
  
“That kind of magic wouldn’t work on non-werewolves if it was the kind of magic that Potter said it was.” Hinsley’s face was narrow with satisfaction. “All the experts we can find on werewolves assure us of that. Potter was using something  _else,_ and whether that something works on humans or not, it definitely can’t tame Thornsberry in the simple way he says it can. He was lying. We need another opinion.”  
  
Draco’s shoulders relaxed. He had thought something was wrong with  _him_ for reacting to Potter’s magic. But what if it was only that Potter was stronger than anyone thought, stranger than anyone thought? His magic had always been strange, from his survival of the Killing Curse. It would make sense that he wasn’t like other werewolves.  
  
Draco shouldn’t have doubted.  
  
“If you think that I can rattle Potter into providing that opinion, sir,” he said, “then I’ll try.”


	9. Combat the Feeling

Draco had assumed that his second entrance into the Forbidden Forest would be much the same as his first one. Perhaps he would be met by a different member of Potter’s pack, or he would remember part of the path and find his way there on his own. But he had no reason to think that much would change, and he walked towards the Forest filled with that kind of confidence.  
  
His steps faltered the instant Potter stepped out of the forest and nodded familiarly to him.  
  
Draco clenched down on the need to flee, though, and reminded himself of what he had decided before he left the Ministry. He could still show emotions and let Potter smell them without shaming himself or the Department of Mysteries, as long as he didn’t let them distract him from his goal. He had a purpose here, one that he had follow. That purpose was the important thing.  
  
Not how much shame and humiliation he might suffer in the work of fulfilling it.  
  
“Hullo,” said Potter, grinning at him. “I heard you were coming back, and I thought you might need a guide.”  
  
“You heard I was coming back?” Draco thought he could ask the question without giving too much away. After all, Invisible Heldeson and the Minister would probably want to know the answer, too. “From who?”  
  
“I have some people in the Ministry who still tell me things they think I need to know,” said Potter, with a wave of his hand, and he turned and walked beside Draco as they stepped onto the first of the paths that wound through the forest in the direction of the pack’s territory. Draco tried not to be hyper-conscious of the way that Potter breathed and shifted around, and the way his sweat smelled. “They were the ones who warned me about there being a Ministry negotiator in the first place, and then told me it would be you.”  
  
“So you had an advantage over me even before I arrived,” Draco noted, and nothing he could have done would prevent his voice from being tight.  
  
“What do you mean, advantage? Unless you’re going to tell me that you didn’t know who they were sending you to negotiate with.”  
  
Draco frowned and looked away. Criticism from Potter was something he’d assumed he’d have to deal with, but he’d also assumed that it wouldn’t make him uncomfortable. “No, of course I knew.”  
  
“Then what’s the problem?” Potter stopped in the middle of the path and stared at Draco.  
  
“The  _problem_ ,” Draco said, picking his words so they would all come out as clear as ice, “is that you’ve been spying on the Ministry and distrusting their words all along. Of course you’re going to distrust me, too. You never meant to negotiate in good faith.”  
  
“If you think that you’re the same as the Ministry, you really should think again,” said Potter, and shook his head. “I don’t know how you would have thought that in the first place. And spying on the Ministry is pure self-protection when you’re a werewolf.”  
  
“I’m a representative of the Ministry. You need to trust me to trust them.”  
  
“Really.” Potter folded his arms and lounged against a tree nearby. “And here I thought that you really cared more about representing the Department of Mysteries than you did anything else. When did you take on the concerns of the whole Ministry? Do you know something about this case with Thornsberry that I don’t? If you think that he’s much more dangerous than was ever reported publicly, I’d like to know.”  
  
Draco really hated the feeling of the ground shifting under his feet every few seconds. “You must know more about him than I do, if you threatened to adopt him.”  
  
“I like the word ‘threatened’ there,” said Potter. His eyes had sharpened, but he didn’t move. “And no, the only sources I have are the reports on him that were publicly released by the Ministry and some old werewolf gossip that I doubt has roots in anything current. Please tell me if he’s dangerously insane. I’d like to know.”  
  
“He’s the Scion of Fenrir Greyback. Bitten by him out of personal choice, and then groomed and trained until he’s basically Greyback all over again. I don’t know what more you need to know.”  
  
“That would explain a bit.” The way Potter didn’t move was getting on Draco’s nerves. “If you think that’s what a Scion is.”  
  
Draco almost relaxed. It would explain a lot if the Ministry and Potter were working off different definitions of what a Scion was. “Then you tell me what the werewolf idea is.”  
  
“Someone you recognize a bit of yourself in. You want to pass along what you know, and the way you think, and what you learn, but werewolves rarely have normal families with children they can give that to.” Potter’s voice rang in a way that made Draco think this confession might be a weakness, but he couldn’t see a way to exploit it for right now, so he put it away for later. “Instead, you find another werewolf who can be trained in that way. It doesn’t have to be one you bit. Greyback might have bitten Thornsberry, but I can make him over again into my Scion. It just depends on the magic.”  
  
“The powerful magic you have that you demonstrated to me.” Draco wondered if he had found the answer the Ministry had sent him to seek already. A werewolf pack leader might have magic that could affect normal humans, and the Ministry wouldn’t know that because they had spoken more to low-ranking werewolves than pack leaders. And that would make Draco an innocent victim of something that happened often, not…  
  
Not what he had feared.  
  
“Yes, that power.” Potter turned his head again, and if his eyes were greener than Draco had remembered and his smile was secret and delightful, that didn’t matter. Draco was determined that it was not going to matter. “The power that I already explained to the Ministry, and which I don’t understand why they didn’t believe me about.”  
  
Draco held his eye, and lied as best he knew how. “I think they were reluctant to believe that your power could affect humans as well as werewolves.”  
  
Potter’s jaw dropped a little. Then he spread his hands and said, “If they think of us as non-human, that explains a lot about them.”  
  
It was Draco’s turn to halt. “Potter, you  _know_ that the Ministry doesn’t think of werewolves as human. Otherwise, they wouldn’t make them register or live apart from the rest of the wizarding world. You’ve been speaking in the same terms, what with saying that werewolves rarely get to have normal families. Why is this such a surprise?”  
  
 _If the fuck-ups that the Ministry is having with the werewolves are just a lack of communication…_  
  
Draco wouldn’t consider himself an expert in diplomacy or anything, but that did sound like a problem he could potentially solve. Whether or not Potter would  _want_ him to was another matter.  
  
*  
  
 _Less than human is different from_ not  _being human at all._  
  
But Harry doubted that he could make Malfoy see the difference when he had never been a werewolf. And he had confirmed, without blinking, that the Ministry knew about Harry’s power already.  
  
This conversation had gone strange places. Harry decided to push them a step further, to stranger places still. “Would you be willing to serve as our messenger back to the Ministry along with being their messenger to us?”  
  
Malfoy went as stiff as a deer scenting for danger, and watched him out of the corner of one eye. His scent was deep and rich, changing in a complex mixture of fear and anger. “I don’t know what you mean.”  
  
Harry stopped in the middle of the forest path and turned around. Malfoy’s fear scent increased when Harry blocked his way, and his hand strayed towards one of the artifacts on his belt. At least that was confirmation, again unblinking, that he never came into the forest without being armed, and that some of his artifacts might do nastier things than the two he had demonstrated so far to Harry.  
  
“Go and tell them the truth,” Harry whispered, holding his eyes. “That we’re still human, and that we want to be left alone. That I can tame Thornsberry because it doesn’t matter if he’s not a werewolf in my pack right now or my Scion; I can affect even  _you_ , a trained Unspeakable, so I’ll be able to affect him.” Harry reckoned a little flattery couldn’t hurt. “That this is all a simple misunderstanding. That they think we’re outside their ways and a danger to them, but we could be welcomed back inside those ways.”  
  
It was a long time before Malfoy answered. His scent didn’t provide the clues that Harry’s fluttering nose sought, as long as Harry concentrated. It seemed that Malfoy didn’t reveal everything of his feelings right away. Or maybe this was just the sort of feeling that Harry wasn’t as used to smelling as often, and didn’t recognize. Even though he had been a werewolf for a few years now, he still didn’t know everything his nose could do.  
  
“I think the Ministry would accept that solution. After all, Harry Potter is known for his openness and honesty.”  
  
“I can’t believe you said that with a straight face,” Harry interrupted. “Not where the Ministry is concerned.”  
  
Malfoy gave him the sort of haughty look that Harry had been missing, and which the younger version of himself would have been using from the beginning of this conversation. “You might think that everyone in the Ministry hates you, Potter. That’s not true.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean hatred. I just mean that they don’t  _trust_ me. Even now, when the  _Prophet_ gets bored, they print articles about how I must be lying about this or that minor aspect of the war.”  
  
In truth, those articles didn’t bother Harry much, as long as people he liked or who mattered to him didn’t make judgments about him based on them. Of course he had lied about some things, like Horcruxes, and they were the sorts of lies he was going to continue to use. No one else  _needed_ to know how Voldemort had split his soul.  
  
“Perhaps not,” said Malfoy, his voice polished. “But I believe that I said the Ministry  _would_ trust that.”  
  
This time, Harry caught on. “So there’s some other condition keeping them from trusting me?”  
  
“Of course,” said Malfoy. His hand had left his belt, but hovered in the air somewhere between him and Harry, as if he thought that he might have to touch Harry’s arm. Harry knew that would be perfectly all right with  _him_ , but he didn’t know how to say it in a way that wouldn’t send Malfoy running. “But only if you have absolute openness and honesty in return, and tell them what they need to know.”  
  
“I have,” said Harry, blinking. Then he remembered Malfoy’s strange issues with authority and the Unspeakables again. “Do you need my permission to tell them what I said to you? Because it’s fine if you tell them whatever you like. You can show them Pensieve memories of this conversation for all I care, if that would help convince them.”  
  
Malfoy’s stare sharpened, and emotions drifted through his scent again. At least this time, Harry thought he recognized the spikiest one. It was frustration. He smelled it a lot from Ninian and Woolwine, too. He had to smile.  
  
“No,” said Malfoy, his voice brittle. “I mean  _all_ your secrets. The Ministry knows you can affect people in ways that other werewolf leaders can’t.”  
  
“What are they basing that on? I think we’ve established that they don’t know that much about werewolves, if they don’t know what a Scion really is.”  
  
Malfoy made a rough noise under his breath. “Because you’re Harry Potter, and stronger than any other werewolf leader they’ve encountered. So you need to tell us what makes you different, and show us what kind of advantage your power would give you in negotiations with humans.”  
  
Perhaps it was hearing Malfoy also refer to “humans” as if they were different from werewolves. Perhaps it was the persistent distrust when Harry thought he had succeeded in convincing him that Harry’s own magic wasn’t that strange. But either way, something snapped inside Harry, and he surged forwards.  
  
A second later, his hands were around Malfoy’s head, because Malfoy’s head was pinned against a tree, and Harry’s chest and legs rested against Malfoy’s chest and legs.  
  
“You want a demonstration?” Harry breathed. “How about I give you one?”  
  
He could feel the way that Malfoy’s heartbeat picked up even better than he could hear it. For a second, Malfoy’s hand was on his wrist, so still that Harry thought he would jerk it sideways and break it—if Malfoy could free himself from the strange trance holding him.  
  
Then Malfoy said, in a voice like a faraway teakettle, “You said that you would never use your power on anyone who’s not willing.”  
  
“I think you’d be willing,” Harry whispered. “Because that way, you could bear the  _exact_  tale to your superiors, and you could tell them  _exactly_ what it’s like to be under that power, and if you still believe there’s somehow a difference between me and everybody else, you would have first-hand experience to back you up.”  
  
There was silence between them then—at least on the scale of words. Harry could still easily hear the galloping of Malfoy’s heart, and the way he panted, and tried to control that panting, and shifted his hands in Harry’s grip. He was never going to break free that way, though. And Harry held his hands away from the artifacts on his belt. Malfoy would have to make a decision, and speak.  
  
“Yes,” Malfoy said finally.  
  
Harry smiled, and cupped his chin. “You want to experience it first-hand?” he whispered, just to make sure that Malfoy meant what Harry thought he did.  
  
Malfoy probably found it hard to nod with Harry holding his head like that, but he met Harry’s eyes and blinked, once.  
  
And Harry called his power, and focused it on calming Malfoy’s heartbeat and making his captivity in Harry’s arms warm and pleasant.  
  
*  
  
Draco knew this had been a bad idea the moment he felt the small hairs on his arms rise. It wasn’t with cold, nor yet with fear. Potter’s magic prevented him from experiencing either one of those.   
  
It was with sheer, shivering warmth, the sort of awareness he had had the first time he wanted someone and they walked into a room.  
  
It was what he had feared to find out what he was. Not just a human who was affected by Potter’s strange powers, but someone drawn to Potter, compelled towards him.  
  
 _Attracted to a beast._  
  
 _Drawn to one of our enemies, who would damage us if he could. Someone who wants Thornsberry in his pack wouldn’t care about the pain innocent people would suffer in the pursuit of his obsession._  
  
Those thoughts and words whirled through Draco’s head and were gone. He drained into the heat that spread over him from the places where Potter’s hands gripped his shoulders, and his belly expanded, and he was breathing, concentrating on his breathing, for the first time in what felt like years.  
  
Potter still held him close. There was no way he could miss Draco’s reaction to all of this. Draco tried to tell himself that an erection was no more humiliating than the way his scent had probably changed, and the hairs on his arms, and all the rest of a bunch of signals that Potter couldn’t miss, as near to each other as they were.  
  
It did nothing to dismiss the stinging blush in his cheeks.  
  
Potter continued to hold him, but his face had altered. He was looking at Draco as though he had changed into someone else. Draco held back a comment that that would be  _Potter’s_ specialty, and not his, and listened to his breathing, and savored the warmth as best he could.  
  
Potter let him go. Draco backed a step away. There was some more silence between them, filled up with the sound of Draco’s breathing quickening again, until he shut his mouth and looked away.  
  
“It wasn’t supposed to humiliate you.”  
  
Draco shivered, and continued looking at the trunk of a nearby, heavy tree that couldn’t embarrass him. “But you did,” he said. “You must have smelled that you did when we were in those little guest quarters after the last time.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
So maybe the tree was less able to hold Draco’s attention than he’d thought. He blinked and turned his head. “What does that mean?”  
  
“I’m sorry for humiliating you.” Potter nodded to him, and his face was open and sincere in that way that Draco still thought of as natural for him, no matter how many times the  _Daily Prophet_ called him a liar. “I never meant to. I should have realized that it would do that, and not used the power.” He turned and started walking in the direction of the pack again.  
  
Draco followed him quickly. “Being aroused like that would humiliate anyone who wasn’t a werewolf,” he said.  
  
“No. Because it aroused Lisa, too. That’s why she was so uncomfortable with doing it in front of you, but she did it because I asked her. And you did it because I asked you to.” Potter paused and looked over his shoulder. “I did think that it might help break you out of that insane emotionless mask you’re trying to adopt, and which is never going to fit you. But if you need the mask for your job, I don’t have the right to shatter it.”  
  
Draco stood in place again, watching Potter walk around the trees. Potter didn’t seem inclined to wait for him or look back. Maybe he knew that Draco wouldn’t abandon the negotiations again, no matter what he said, because Draco didn’t want to humiliate his Department.  
  
 _That insane emotionless mask…it’s never going to fit you._  
  
Draco shook his head furiously. The emotionless mask was what the Unspeakables adopted, and had to adopt, by necessity. Because they dealt with people and artifacts that would pounce on a sliver of emotion and make it into a weakness.  
  
And what would Draco have if he  _had_ stayed with that emotion, let himself be open and feel all the pain that came along with losing his family’s place and prestige in the wizarding world? Nothing, of course. He’d sit in his emotions and stew and do nothing else.  
  
With the mask that Potter was talking about, he had prestige and a job that he was good at and a group of colleagues who would take risks for him. He had to do the same thing for them if they were going to respect him.  
  
If the mask didn’t fit, that came more from his own deficiencies in making it not a mask, but part of himself.  
  
He hardened his heart, because that was what an Unspeakable needed to do, and followed Potter.


	10. Disarm the Pack

“I notice that you haven’t made good on the promise you seemed to have at first,” said Ninian, sliding in alongside Draco at one of the tables for the evening meal. Even when they didn’t have a feast, Draco found, Potter’s pack seemed to eat at these long tables. It was probably Potter’s way of going back to Gryffindor in his imagination. “The promise of working against our beloved leader.”  
  
Draco ate some more of the stew, which seemed to have a lot of pulped vegetables floating in it along with slices of meat, and said nothing. He told himself that the meat was probably rabbit—more likely to be that, anyway, than some of the other things he could imagine. He ignored Ninian.  
  
“And now you won’t even speak to someone Potter’s probably told you is a troublemaker and not worth your time?” Ninian leaned back, squinting at him, one hand on his own plate that held a slice of raw meat. “Pity.”  
  
Draco turned his head. “I didn’t come here to negotiate Potter’s defeat,” he said. “I came to find out why he thinks he can tame Thornsberry.” He had so far spent three days among Potter’s pack on that last mission, though, and had to admit that so far, he hadn’t come across a lot of evidence that disproved what Potter had told him already. He was a powerful werewolf, and he could give anyone, even humans, a sense of comfort and belonging.  
  
But that was what Potter claimed, and what the Ministry knew couldn’t be true. There had to be something further, something stranger.  
  
Draco just needed to know how to interpret the evidence that was probably right there in front of him.  
  
“What if I could help you, and you could help me?” Ninian moved restlessly to his right, enough that Draco caught his eye again. “I know you can’t lend me the Ministry’s full support. It was a fantasy to think you could. But we might make a different kind of trade. I tell you the answer to your question, and you tell me some of what you knew about Potter when he was a child.”  
  
“I don’t see how that last would help you,” Draco had to point out. “I haven’t met Potter since he turned into a werewolf. He’s very different now than the child I knew.”  
  
Ninian frowned and picked up a piece of the raw meat, gnawing on it. “Well, I know that,” he said. “And his magical and physical strength are beyond question. He wouldn’t have control of us, otherwise. But what about his emotional vulnerabilities? They’re the only way I can think of to attack him.”  
  
“Both you and the Ministry,” Draco muttered. Minister Hinsley seemed to trust him to actually exploit Potter’s weaknesses in the name of finding out the secret of his power, while Ninian wanted a little more than that.  
  
“What did you say?” Ninian was looking at him, as Draco had discovered due to his past few days here, not like a werewolf who hadn’t heard him, but like a werewolf who couldn’t believe what he had heard.  
  
Draco faced Ninian again. Hadn’t he thought that he was going to serve the Department of Mysteries as well as he could? And sitting around and feeling sorry for himself didn’t do that. But giving attention to the problem, and using his childish emotional outbursts as weapons in themselves, might.  
  
“The Ministry is concerned that Potter might not be able to handle Thornsberry. You know that already, or I wouldn’t have been sent.”  
  
Golden light flared in the back of Ninian’s eyes. “And they should be concerned. Even if Potter managed to tame him, there would be people here who wouldn’t stay in the same pack as such a notorious criminal.”  
  
Draco refrained from saying that the Ministry didn’t care about the internal problems of a werewolf pack unless those problems could be twisted to further their own goals. “What I want to know is, how common is it for werewolf leaders to be able to handle someone like that? Potter said that he could make Thornsberry into his Scion. But Thornsberry is already known as Fenrir Greyback’s Scion. Can Potter really change his nature? Or is he always going to run around enforcing what Greyback what would have wanted him to enforce?”  
  
Ninian hissed a little. “A Scion is supposed to be a werewolf secret. I see that Potter has been spilling his mouth to you just the way he  _shouldn’t_.”  
  
Draco saw no use in saying that he had already known that tidbit of information about Scions before he came here. He didn’t think Ninian would take it well. And Ninian had already gone on. “I wouldn’t think it’s likely at all. Greyback was the most powerful member of our kind in decades. He couldn’t have taken his pack on the road like that and influenced other werewolves if it wasn’t so. A pack tends to break up once it reaches a certain size, or if the leader leaves for a while.”  
  
 _Or it fragments around him while he’s sitting still,_ Draco thought. He wondered again why Potter was so determined to hang onto people who wanted him gone, like Ninian. Perhaps it was the pack’s place in the Forbidden Forest that was important to him, rather than the werewolves involved.  
  
“If Greyback made a Scion, and I’m not saying that he did, then that Scion would stay loyal to him.” Ninian snorted and folded his arms. “I never heard of this Thornsberry before he attacked the Minister’s son, though, so there’s reason to think that he’s all  _that_ powerful or great. I’m just telling you what I know.”  
  
Draco held his face immobile as he considered. Potter had seemed so honest, and straightforward—and even if he couldn’t dominate Thornsberry with his power, that didn’t answer the question of why Potter was so confident that he  _could._ But it might give Draco an idea of his power’s limit.  
  
“So it’s your thought that Potter would never be able to accomplish what he says he will,” he said. “Even if he’s remarkable at a great number of things.”  
  
Ninian snorted. “Are all those tales they tell of him really true? Ask yourself that. How could one person  _accomplish_ them all?”  
  
Draco shrugged noncommittally. “I was there to see some of them happen. It doesn’t mean that he’s great at everything, but some of the stranger things are true.” He thought of the way that Potter had seemed to spring back to life from the gamekeeper’s arms, and shivered a little. Yes, strange things were true.  
  
“Fine,” said Ninian, who now looked a little disgruntled. “Even the vast majority. He doesn’t know  _much_ about being a werewolf. I’ve been one much longer than he has, and I say that it’s impossible for one werewolf to change another’s Scion into theirs.”  
  
“Why does Potter go along with the lie, then?”  
  
“Because he thinks that people from the Ministry don’t know enough about werewolves to prove him wrong.” Ninian nodded, pleased. “It’s a good thing for you that you talked to me.”  
  
Draco held his peace on that. Maybe just asking Ninian would give him some answers on what else was puzzling him. “What about this power Potter has?”  
  
“What power?” Ninian looked around with a sneer that Draco thought was directed at his packmates. “I’m not the one who thought Potter was a harmless nobody and we shouldn’t drive him out of the pack the minute he appeared.”  
  
“I meant,” Draco said, “the power he has to make people hold still and feel a sense of warmth and belonging. He demonstrated it in front of me, so I know it exists. And then he demonstrated it on me, even though it’s not supposed to work on humans.”  
  
Ninian froze, staring at him. Then he said, “He doesn’t have that.”  
  
“Yes,” Draco said, “he does.”  
  
Ninian opened his mouth as if he would continue arguing with Draco about this, but abruptly, he jerked his head up and looked over Draco’s shoulder, a growl rising in his throat. Draco started to turn his head, but Potter’s voice spoke before he could complete the motion, his tone relentlessly cordial. “Could I talk to you, Ninian?”  
  
Ninian didn’t back down or flinch the way Draco had thought he would, after his talk of Potter’s power. He simply rose to his feet and growled, “I’m sick of this. I challenge you to a leadership battle, Potter.”  
  
Potter raised his eyebrows. He was standing not far behind Draco, so at ease that Draco wanted to hit him. He should have showed a little more discomfort or consciousness about sneaking up behind someone, at least.  
  
“Really,” he said. “I suppose you know that it’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning, so everyone else can be informed of the challenge and make the circle?”  
  
“Let it wait!” Ninian looked as if he’d foam at the mouth. “I want everyone to see what a hypocrite you are!”  
  
“Very well,” said Potter. He looked calmer than Draco thought he could reasonably be, and he found himself holding his breath, anticipating the moment when Potter would burst out with his contempt at someone who challenged him like that. But it didn’t happen. “Then you won’t mind leaving our honored guest alone for now, and obeying that supposedly ancient tradition that someone undertaking the leadership challenge spends his last night alone.”  
  
Ninian stood there for a moment, trembling. Draco thought he would violate the “tradition,” if it even existed, and stay, but a second later, he hissed, bowed, and strode away from the tables and benches.  
  
“And now, you.” Potter sat down on the bench across from Draco, trailing his nails in the marks Ninian had left, and looking at him. “What can I do to stop you from encouraging my packmates to rebel?”  
  
“He approached me,” said Draco, but he pursed his mouth tight after that. He wasn’t going to say anything else that would make him appear weak in Potter’s eyes. Using the humiliation and the embarrassment that already existed to help himself was one thing. Stirring up new humiliations on purpose was something else. He turned back to his tasteless stew.  
  
“Well?”  
  
Draco glanced up and let himself frown. “What else do you want me to say? He approached me, and he told me interesting things.”  
  
“Really.” Potter’s eyes burned, but that could as easily be in reference to Ninian as to Draco himself. At least Draco was sitting down, so he wasn’t standing up to let his legs tremble. “Like what?”  
  
 _Do I really want to do this?_ The method of speaking directly and giving away all his secrets first was alien to Draco.  
  
But until Ninian spoke to him, Draco had really believed what Potter had told him about Scions. And working off of false information would hurt the Department of Mysteries more than the embarrassment of one of its most minor servants.  
  
“That a Scion can’t be turned by another werewolf,” said Draco, “or changed. So Thornsberry is always going to belong to Greyback no matter what you try to do to him. And that you don’t have a special kind of power that can affect werewolves and humans alike, the way you’ve been trying to pretend you do.”  
  
“And you believe him?” Potter’s voice was shallow and relaxed. “Why?”  
  
 _I wish I had a werewolf’s nose, and I could smell what he was feeling right now.  
  
_ But Draco rejected the thought a moment after he’d had it. He had  _never_ wanted to be a werewolf when he was a Malfoy alone, and he couldn’t want to be one right now. Werewolves couldn’t work in the Department of Mysteries. Draco would never want to sacrifice all he had gained for the sake of one possible convenience.  
  
“Because it does sound more likely than you having a power that the Ministry has never heard of,” said Draco.  
  
Potter sighed and propped his chin on his fist. "You've received answers to those questions. Is it my fault that you and your Ministry are so distrustful of those answers that you think I  _must_  be lying?"  
  
Draco said nothing. He could remember one interrogation conducted by two Unspeakable trainees on the owner of a Dark artifact the Department hadn't been able to figure out. They had asked and asked what the artifact did; he had refused to tell them; they had got rougher, and he finally answered. But by then they didn't believe him, and they had gone on questioning him, phrasing the questions in as many different ways as possible to try and trick the truth out of him. It had taken Invisible Heldeson intervening to point out that he had probably been telling the truth when he first answered.  
  
Draco remembered that incident well, because he had been one of the two Unspeakable trainees.  
  
He leaned back and looked at Potter. “I distrust you because the Ministry has different information,” he said. “And Ninian gave me different information yet again. Why should I trust you more than either of them?”  
  
Potter grinned at him. “That’s a better question than the one I expected you to ask. And you looked like yourself as you said it.”  
  
“I always look like myself.” Draco spoke more coldly than he meant to. He knew that he couldn’t rely on the Malfoy looks that had always gained power and favor before. What he needed was the cool expression and grey cloak and hood of an Unspeakable.  
  
“But you looked like someone who breathes just now,” said Potter, and went on before Draco could ask him what that meant. “I do have an answer for you, though. I have more incentive to tell you the truth. The others only want to use you. I’ve given you the truth from the beginning and haven’t asked you to do anything for me.”  
  
“You asked me to be your messenger to the Ministry for your supposedly true information. That’s something.”  
  
Draco could feel a stir of uneasiness in the back of his mind even as he spoke, though. Minister Hinsley had commanded him. Ninian had wanted to make a bargain with him. It was true that Potter hadn’t done either of those things. What if he was right?  
  
But Draco shook off that idea, because Potter had more power than Draco did in this situation. He didn’t need to bargain. He would just order if he got around to that.  
  
“Fine,” said Potter, with a quick dip of his head. “But I can’t make you bear the message. I asked you.”  
  
“Just as Ninian asked me to listen to him.”  
  
Potter sighed and stood up, shaking his head. “I don’t think that the Ministry has a motive to tell you the truth. They flung you into this situation in the first place without enough truth to make a decision. Just remember that.”  
  
He turned away before Draco could ask him what  _his_ motive was, then. Because what he had already hinted was simply unbelievable.  
  
He couldn’t want Draco to be more emotional, more like the Malfoy he had once been. No one in the world wanted that, except people who were dead. And Draco included the boy of his childhood among those people.  
  
*  
  
“Is it true that Ninian challenged you for leadership of the pack?”  
  
June was the one who confronted him, the angle of her head impertinent. Harry could have grunted at her and kept walking. He didn’t. He had only recently talked June around into thinking that he wasn’t so bad after all, and she was someone that people would watch because he had battled her right before Malfoy got here.   
  
“He did,” said Harry, and leaned against the trunk of a tree, and looked around. He could smell the scents of other pack members, casually drifting in his direction, or with movements that would look casual if you didn’t know the way they reacted. Their scents still seemed less crowding and overwhelming than the scents of Malfoy’s emotions. “He said that he was sick of ‘this,’ without being more specific.”  
  
“But he was speaking to the Ministry negotiator,” said Sarah Woolwine, stepping around in front of a tree. “I saw.”  
  
“Of course he was,” said Harry, with a bored sigh that concealed more than he would let them know. “And he was trying to encourage the Ministry to interfere in our pack. He already tried to do that once before, the last time Unspeakable Malfoy was here.”  
  
Woolwine tensed, and the air filled with the whirling of anger. Harry considered Woolwine with the most interest. He had thought she was exactly like Ninian, willing to do anything to get him out of the pack leadership. But it seemed she drew the line at collaborating with the Ministry.  
  
“What did he try to do?” Woolwine breathed.  
  
Harry smiled at her. “Encourage the Ministry negotiator to support his rebellion in exchange for—something. I’m not sure exactly what. For that, you would have to ask him.”  
  
Woolwine marched off, probably to do exactly that, although Ninian wouldn’t want to interrupt his isolation to talk to her. Other werewolves started arguing with each other about who would win the challenge, or telling Harry why they supported him, or making bets.  
  
Harry grinned around at all of them. Sometimes he wondered why he had ever taken on the challenge of running the pack, and other times, he knew.


	11. Challenge the Leader

  
“I need to speak to Invisible Heldeson.”  
  
Draco kept his voice low. He wouldn’t use the fire in his little guest quarters to communicate with the Department of Mysteries, even assuming he could ask for Floo powder freely. Too much chance of someone overhearing.  
  
But he had brought another artifact with him, a stainless steel hoop that someone might think was a large earring. He could whisper into it, a word he had chosen himself and unlikely to be guessed by anyone else, “asphodel.” And the hoop would shine, and connect him with another, similar hoop in the Department of Mysteries, and  _that_ one would ring and catch the attention of the nearest Unspeakable, transmitting a small image of their face and their voice, as it sent a small version of Draco’s the other way.  
  
At the moment, the Unspeakable Draco had contacted, a trainee named Williams, looked skeptical and opposed to doing anything Draco wanted. Draco would have liked to sneer, but restrained himself. That he could read Williams’s face this clearly was already a sign of the failure of her training.  
  
“Invisible Heldeson,” said Draco, making sure to keep his voice smooth and distant. “She will want to know what I have discovered immediately.”  
  
“She’s in a meeting with the Minister right now,” Williams finally said, apparently having decided that Draco and his mission were worth supporting. “I can’t disturb her.”  
  
Draco wanted to shriek at the unfairness of the universe. But that kind of impulse was precisely what he was trying to train out of himself, so he only nodded and said, “Then please tell her that I have information for her the Ministry might use, but only if they move fast. I’m sure she’ll be sorry to have missed my call.”  
  
“Wait!”  
  
Draco moved his hand delicately back from the hoop. It was amazing what kind of incentive a little threat could give.  
  
“I can’t—I really can’t interrupt an Invisible and the Minister.” Williams was almost whimpering, and she looked back and forth as though planning to kill whoever saw her whimpering at a hoop. “I’m just a trainee. But I might be able to interrupt them if you’ll lend me your authority.”  
  
Draco hesitated. Lending someone your authority meant authorizing another Unspeakable to act in your name, share your artifacts, take up your cases, use your discoveries. Williams was right in that she would be able to interrupt a meeting then, because any fully-trained Unspeakable would, if the cause was urgent enough.  
  
On the other hand, Draco was in trouble already. If  _he_ was the fully-trained Unspeakable who interrupted the meeting, there was no saying that Invisible Heldeson or Minister Hinsley would be charitable towards him, even if he was there himself.  
  
But this was important information. And the Ministry really would have only about twelve hours to act, assuming that the rest of this night was all the time. Draco didn’t have actual  _confirmation_ that Ninian and Potter would fight early in the morning, but it seemed likely.  
  
“Fine,” he said. “I, Unspeakable Draco Malfoy, lend my authority to you, Spoken Esther Williams.”  
  
Williams seemed to flush with an actual transfer of magical power, although as far as Draco knew the hoops didn’t do that. He resolved to investigate it when he returned to the Department of Mysteries. “Fine. What do I need to tell them?”  
  
“That a werewolf called Frederick Ninian is challenging Harry Potter for leadership of the pack in the Forbidden Forest.” Draco was glad that he could speak fluently now, when he was calling upon facts. “They’ll fight for the leadership challenge tomorrow. If the Ministry can get another observer here, or someone who can intervene in the way they want, they might find Potter in a weakened state.”  
  
Williams gaped at him a little. “Why does the Ministry care so much about who leads a werewolf pack?”  
  
Draco swallowed back his objection to her asking the question. He had lent her his authority, and he had to treat the question as he would one from an equal. “I don’t know the full answer to that. But Minister Hinsley will include it in his explanation to you.”  
  
Williams nodded gravely. “And can the Ministry trust this Frederick Ninian to represent their interests?”  
  
A good question, a fair question, and Draco relaxed a little at the reminder of the ideals they both served. “I think so. He hates Potter, and wants him deposed. He was willing to trust me the first time I went as negotiator with no prior experience of me, and despite the Ministry’s position on werewolves. I think he would do anything the Minister asked of him.”  
  
“Very good,” said Williams, and bowed to him a little, her hand on her heart. “I will represent you to the Minister and Invisible Heldeson, and use your authority well.”  
  
Draco relaxed further. That was the best he could hope for, really. “Thank you, Spoken Williams. Please convey the information back to me by speaking my name into this hoop.”  
  
Williams nodded, and then her image shimmered and vanished. Draco lay back on his bed. Perhaps the Ministry would send someone else, someone who knew more than he did and  _could_ know more than he did, someone who would accomplish what they wanted.  
  
And Draco could go to sleep, and ignore the little nagging whisper in the back of his head that he had made a mistake.  
  
*  
  
The pack formed the circle early enough next morning that dew still patterned the grass at their feet.  
  
Harry stood there and lifted his head to the air, sniffing, not caring who saw him do it. The scent of the wet grass came to him, and blood from a kill that an owl had made further into the Forest. He smelled centaur, heavy and horsey and human all at once. And he smelled the werewolves of the pack moving silently into place around him.  
  
Off to the side, in a clump of trees, was a distinctive dry insect smell. Paracelsus was there to watch the challenge.  
  
 _Do it, then, Paracelsus,_ Harry thought, and arched his head back, knowing that his throat would show off to distinct advantage.  _Do it, and dream about what you’re never going to have._  
  
He thought for a second that Paracelsus might help Ninian, but if he did, so be it. There was no reason for Harry to think that he couldn’t defeat both of them.  
  
 _And maybe that’s the adrenaline talking._  
  
Harry smiled. It probably was.  
  
He looked around the forming circle, and raised his eyebrows when he noted a few people missing. He beckoned, and June Norcom sprang to his side, her eyes glinting as though she really wanted to serve his last few requests in the minutes before his defeat. Or perhaps she was looking forward to seeing him win.  
  
“If you’ll send people to bring Sarah Woolwine and the Ministry negotiator here?” he murmured. “The Ministry negotiator shouldn’t be part of the circle, of course, but Sarah should. And the negotiator should observe.” It was hard to pronounce the official title when his mouth just wanted to say  _Malfoy,_ but he thought that might be a step too far for his pack at the moment.  
  
June’s eyebrows went up, but she nodded, and bounded away into the forest. Harry swept the circle with his eyes once more. They had left an opening directly opposite him, leading down one of the paths into the trees. That was the path Ninian would come down, and once he was part of the circle, the pack would retreat, defining a space inside which Harry and Ninian were alone.  
  
Harry found himself breathing slowly, intensely, and grinned a little. His challenge against the old pack leader hadn’t been like this. Then, he had been far more wound up, tense and nervous, angry that he had to do something like this in the first place for the pack that he had hoped would be an accepting home for him, and determined to win. This time, he just thought he would win.  
  
 _Overconfidence can also kill,_ said his conscience in a prim voice that sounded like Hermione.  
  
The trees rustled, and Sarah came out, with June walking at her side. Sarah looked satisfied about something, and glanced several times down the path that led into the trees. Harry wasn’t worried, though. Even if she had planned something with Ninian, it wouldn’t let her interfere in the challenge. According to the old rules that both she and Ninian loved so much, the challenger had to win alone, or his victory was invalid.  
  
Behind June came Malfoy.  
  
His face was so pale that he looked as though he had got sick. Harry’s attention sharpened on him, and he sniffed, but then shook his head. No, Malfoy’s sweat and breathing were normal. Harry didn’t think he had picked up an illness in the very few hours since Harry had last seen him.  
  
Malfoy came to a halt on the outside of the circle and folded his arms as if he was cold. He kept turning his head back and forth, examining the werewolves around him, and then looking into the Forest. Harry looked that way, too, but saw nothing except the stirring of shadows caused by moved leaves.  
  
Harry thought that he probably knew what Malfoy was looking for. It was not what he had  _wished_ for with Malfoy, but he could acknowledge that it was likely. Malfoy had told someone in the Ministry about this—someone in the Ministry with more interest than they should have in who succeeded to leadership of Harry’s pack—and he was hoping they would intervene.  
  
 _Well, no one’s coming now._ Harry had word from his centaur allies each morning of wizards Apparating in at the Apparition points overnight. No one had come either last night or this morning.  
  
Malfoy finally settled against a tree, his arms still clasped and self-hugging. Harry wanted to go up to him and shake him.  _You could be so much more than this little Unspeakable flunkey if you would stop concerning yourself with what they thought._  
  
But putting it that bluntly would not win him any points with Malfoy. Harry had to think about the duty in front of him, to defeat Ninian. And now a low murmur was picking up among the pack, like distant conversation if wolves had human voices.  
  
Harry faced the path that led into the trees. Yes, he could hear the soft plopping of Ninian’s footsteps coming towards him now, and he lifted his head and showed off his teeth because he felt like it, not because outmoded traditions demanded it.  
  
 _Come on then, Ninian. Show me how it’s done._  
  
*  
  
Draco had received a report back from Williams, but only a quick one, telling him that she had interrupted Minister Hinsley and Invisible Heldeson, and that they had thanked her for her information and then dismissed her from the room. She felt too intimidated to try and go back and demand more answers.  
  
Draco didn’t blame her. He could feel his skin crawling, his breath coming shallowly. He knew, now, that no one was coming, and they didn’t care as much about Potter’s pack and who led it as they had implied they did.  
  
 _Or as I made up in my own head that they did._  
  
Draco couldn’t discount the possibility that he had simply misunderstood the clues and hints that the Minister and Invisible Heldeson had offered him. He had done the best he could to think it through, to understand, and know what the Ministry already knew about Thornsberry and Potter and Potter’s strange powers. But things had changed and got scrambled from the moment he came back into the Forbidden Forest.  
  
So he waited there, knowing no help would come, and he would have to watch this duel between Potter and Ninian without the Ministry being in a position to take advantage of it. He could only hope he wouldn’t be blamed, later.  
  
Ninian came striding up the path the pack had left open for him, his head high and his teeth bared. Draco thought that was a deliberate gesture, rather than a grimace of effort. At least, he hoped it was.  
  
 _You want Potter to lose, of course._  
  
Draco massaged his temples. Since coming here, he had been thrown into such disarray: troubled by the failure of his artifacts, troubled by the failure of his own mask and his lack of control over his own emotions, and troubled by conflicting information. He didn’t know if he should want Potter to lose or not, which outcome would be more favorable for the Ministry.  
  
But maybe it would be best for  _him_  if Potter lost. Ninian wouldn’t adopt Thornsberry, which meant the problem was solved, and Draco could go home.  
  
He raised his head in time to see Potter say something to Ninian, his lips forming the shapes of words that made the pack stamp their feet and howl. Presumably they could all hear it, and Potter didn’t need to say it louder.  
  
Draco wasn’t that skilled a lip reader, and couldn’t make out all the shapes of the words. But he did see what he thought was  _regret the challenge._  
  
Ninian backed away, his hands spread. Potter bowed his head and narrowed his eyes. For a second, the air around him seemed to shimmer.  
  
Then Draco felt the edge of the same flood of warmth and power that he had felt when Potter was concentrating on his packmate in front of Draco. It was the power that he had said he would use to tame Thornsberry. Draco blinked. Potter had said that he wouldn’t ever use that on someone who wasn’t willing, and Ninian definitely  _wasn’t_ willing.  
  
But when he turned to look at Ninian, Draco felt his jaw sag open. Ninian wasn’t falling on his knees and worshipping Potter the way Draco had thought he would. For a few confused seconds, Draco had decided that was the way Potter meant to win the battle, by making Ninian crawl.  
  
Instead, Ninian had his hands over his face, and was making a weird sound, a low growling, groaning sound that Draco didn’t think a human throat was capable of. He swayed on his feet. Draco didn’t have a werewolf’s nose, but he thought that he recognized the signs of extreme fear no matter who was displaying them.  
  
 _What exactly is this?_  
  
Ninian seemed to give up on feeling afraid and standing still in the same moment, and charged with a wild howl. Potter leaped smoothly down to meet him. His hands slammed into Ninian’s shoulders, and for a second, they poised, balanced.  
  
Then Ninian twisted to the side and flexed as if he would throw Potter from his feet. Potter rolled easily with that blow, and Draco snorted to himself. Of course that wouldn’t work. He knew enough about Auror training to realize that they were taught to counter such movements.  
  
Potter broke Ninian’s hold a second later and whirled, slamming a foot into Ninian’s solar plexus. Ninian stumbled, still howling, so the blow couldn’t have hit him too hard, and then leaped in and clawed his hands down Potter’s face and forehead.  
  
Potter only smiled as if that didn’t bother him much, and moved his head backwards and out of reach of Ninian’s next strike. Draco found himself thinking crazily,  _Maybe he’s just used to being scarred on the forehead, and he doesn’t mind anymore—_  
  
But Potter’s next strikes didn’t look like those of a man who didn’t mind. He hit Ninian in the nose, and Draco heard it break. Then he raked his own nails down Ninian’s cheek, although he didn’t draw as much blood as Ninian had on him, and scythed his leg sideways. He hit Ninian’s knee, and Ninian went down.  
  
Potter crouched over him. Again, Draco felt the outer edges of Potter’s magic stirring. This time, though, he had much less trouble controlling his own reaction. It was hard to feel safe around someone you had just seen beat up someone else.  
  
“Do you yield?” Potter asked into Ninian’s face.  
  
Draco didn’t think Ninian had heard at first. He was whimpering steadily, turning his face into the mud beneath him like a wounded animal, and his pulse was beating so rapidly that Draco could see it in his throat. Some of Potter’s blood dripped down from his face and onto Ninian’s broken nose, and Ninian whined and tried to curl up.  
  
“I’m waiting for an answer,” Potter said, and Draco felt a sensation like wind passing over him. It seemed that Potter had increased the flow of his magic.  
  
“Yes,” said Ninian, and his voice broke and rose into a howl. “Yes, yes, yes!”  
  
“Good.” Potter stepped back, his face smooth, and without a trace of the grin Draco had thought would be on it after winning such a violent fight. “Then leave here. The price of losing your leadership challenge is exile from the pack.”  
  
Ninian lay panting there for a second. Draco wondered if someone would interfere, or protest. Ninian wasn’t the only one in the pack who distrusted Potter. If someone supported him, would Potter have to fight a second challenge?  
  
But no one said anything. When Draco looked from face to face, he saw nothing but acceptance. Some of them might have sighed or said something, but it wasn’t while Draco was looking.  
  
Then Ninian sprang to his feet and ran back down the path that had opened for him, into the depths of the Forest. He was howling miserably as he went, and his body was hunched over, causing Draco to worry about the full moon for a moment until he remembered it was nearly a fortnight away.  
  
Potter nodded to the watching pack, and they broke apart and went in the direction of their homes and gardens again. Draco might have done the same, going back to his guest quarters, but Potter caught his eye.  
  
“Unspeakable Malfoy. I’d like to talk with you.”


	12. Explode the Fireball

“I didn’t think you’d do that.”  
  
“Do what?” Draco was back in control of himself. He had trained for situations more worrying than this in the past, when the Unspeakables had sometimes told their trainees about the owners of artifacts who would catch them, call them thieves, torture them for information. Or even members of the general public might do that, if they managed to overcome their fear of Unspeakables and turn it into hatred instead.  
  
Potter kept his back turned for a moment, pacing slowly to the other side of the guest quarters. When he stood by the window, he turned around. Draco frowned a little as his heartbeat picked up. He knew Potter would hear it, but he didn’t understand the acceleration himself. Potter was far from blocking the only exit. There was still the door.  
  
“I’m disappointed that you told the Ministry something about my challenge fight with Ninian,” said Potter quietly, and looked him in the eye. “I had thought—I had thought you might not do that, that you understood enough of the contradictory stories you’ve received that you knew the Ministry wasn’t pure good.”  
  
“And your pack is?” Draco meant it to come out as a sneer. It was more like a squeak.  
  
“I can’t say that.” Potter turned his head restlessly to the side, and his hair rustled on his neck in a way that shouldn’t have been as distracting as it was. Draco inched his hand towards an artifact on his belt, a small bell that would ring if someone was using compulsion charms on him, but it was quiescent. It was something much different instead, something that he feared was connected to that strange magic Potter wielded.  
  
“We  _are_ unstable,” Potter continued, distracting Draco from what he wanted to concentrate on. “We could do with some time to recover ourselves, without any ‘help’ from the Ministry you want to serve so much.”  
  
“I know that the Ministry doesn’t trust you,” said Draco. “That some members of your pack don’t trust you.” He hesitated, but he had come this far, and he might as well say it. “That you’ve lied to me about your own magic. Why should I trust you over my superiors?”  
  
Potter turned around, a smooth, flowing motion. “When did I lie to you about my magic?”  
  
“Twice,” said Draco. “When you said that you didn’t use it on anyone unwilling, and when you said that it always comfortable and warm. I saw you use it on Ninian, and it terrified him.”  
  
Potter’s eyes widened a little. “You must be closer to me than I thought.”  
  
Draco didn’t like the sound of that at all. He crossed his arms and did some more glaring, but Potter wasn’t intimidated. He stared at Draco some more, then turned and looked out the window again, folding his hands in front of him as though he didn’t want them to tremble.  
  
At least, Draco  _hoped_ that was what it meant, rather than just that Potter was holding back on the urge to rip his claws down Draco’s face.  
  
“Tell me,” Draco whispered.  
  
“The power is two-sided,” said Potter softly. “It’s the power of a pack leader, yes, but magnified when I want to concentrate it. I can do that pretty well. Why, I don’t know. It makes those who are my allies or my friends feel comfortable and soothed around me. It makes those who are my enemies fear me and want to run away.” He glanced over his shoulder at Draco. “I normally don’t use it on the unwilling, true. But I can call it up on a challenge. Challenges have rules about the night before and the size of the circle that contains them and all the rest of that, but inside the circle…the rules are suspended. So I could use it on Ninian. And it proved conclusively that he no longer belonged to my pack, because if he had, then he would have felt soothed by it, and wanted to submit to me.”  
  
Draco stared at him. Then he looked down at a slight ripple in his lap, and found out that his  _own_ hands were trembling.  
  
Draco snarled and locked his hands still. Too late to hope that Potter hadn’t noticed, but at least Draco could do his best to face down what he feared. Perhaps that was the true definition of courage.  
  
 _But not the true definition of an Unspeakable._ Draco knew that most Unspeakables wouldn’t have got into this situation in the first place, because they would have kept their distant, cool emotions wrapped up so tightly that Potter’s magic couldn’t have affected them in the first place. Or they would have been his enemies, proved so by the way his power affected them.  
  
Draco would prefer to be the former, but even the latter might have its advantages. He had to pause and gather his voice before he could speak again. “That’s why you exiled him?”  
  
Potter nodded. “Staying in the pack would be miserable for him when he’s so against me. I didn’t know how deep his disappointment with me ran, precisely because I’d held back from letting my magic touch him.” He was watching Draco with something in his eyes that indicated no lack of interest, making Draco clench his fists again. “But you…you’re much closer to me, more responsive to the magic, than someone should be who’s not a werewolf  _or_ even a member of my pack.”  
  
He took a step forwards.  
  
Draco didn’t think about the consequences. Too many thoughts were humming in his brain: whether the Ministry had known this, why they’d sent him, whether the Minister wanted Potter destroyed  _because_ his power was capable of reaching out to humans, why they had thought Draco would be susceptible. He snatched a spiked mace, in miniature and made of bronze, off his belt and held it up. “Don’t come near me,” he whispered. “If you do,  _this_ is waiting for you.”  
  
Potter halted, but from the way his nostrils twitched, he was too interested to stop himself from moving in. “What would it do? Read my soul?  _Rend_ my soul?” He was smiling with a red tongue spilling between white teeth, like a nightmare. Draco heard his own breath escaping, whistling and terrified, from between his own teeth. “I’m willing to take the chance.”  
  
He crossed the last few steps to Draco.  
  
The mace was an artifact that Draco didn’t need a word or even a squeeze for. When his fear flared brightly in his blood and the sweat that poured from his skin, it triggered the mace to life. It transformed in Draco’s hold, the blaze of light sliding over it like water as it became bigger and longer, and launched itself at Potter.  
  
Potter snatched it out of the air, the way he had the crystal beads that Draco had thrown at him after that first conversation with Ninian. He wrestled with it for a long second, the muscles on his arms standing out. Draco discovered he was holding his breath, and let it go with a hiss. He was  _not_ afraid of the outcome of this, because he knew what it would be. Potter would lose, and the mace would pound his skull in, and Draco…  
  
Would go back to the Ministry and confess that he had failed in his mission, and that was worse than murdering someone whose magic filled his head with confusion and warmth.  
  
The mace struggled and snapped open into twin halves of itself, which cut like jaws against Potter’s chin. He showed no fear even now, turning to the side as if he wanted to pin the mace against the wall. It squirmed away from that and leaped out, in a blow that would shatter Potter’s teeth.  
  
“ _Stop_.”  
  
Draco didn’t recognize the high-pitched voice that spoke as his own, but it had to be, because the next instant, the mace fell to the floor with a disappointed-sounding clatter.  
  
That left two of them breathing in the guest quarters, and Potter watching Draco with his strange, wild eyes. Draco, feeling ill, knelt down and reached out a hand. The mace rolled over to him, slow and deliberate. The halves had snapped back together again, and it shrank the instant that Draco reclaimed it.  
  
Draco stared dully at it. He really didn’t know why it had shrunk back again, because the trigger was his fear, and he was still afraid.  
  
“You didn’t have to do that. Thank you.”  
  
Draco looked up. Potter stood in front of him with one hand extended, as though he assumed Draco would need some help standing up. Draco shook his head and rose, trembling so hard that he thought his teeth would vibrate out of his head. The words came without him having to think of them or reach for them this time.  
  
“I  _hate_ you,” he whispered. “There’s so much that I want to do, and I might never get the chance to do it, thanks to you. They’ll take me away from artifact duty and put me on classification duty. I’ll just tell other Unspeakables what the objects they’ve collected do. I’ll never have the chance to test them and work with them and reshape them myself. And all because of  _you_.”  
  
“It’s not like I knew they would assign you to me or like I ever interfered with your work before you came here.” Potter stared at him with the same wild eyes. “Why are you blaming  _me_ instead of your bosses? I think they’re the ones with unreasonable demands.”  
  
Draco pushed his hair out of his face. When had it come loose from the neat style he usually kept it in? He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. Right now, the words were coming. He would have cracked his  _own_ teeth if he’d tried to keep them silent. “They offered me a job. The only way I can continue being an Unspeakable is if I’m  _good_ at that job. Good! And you have to maintain an objective distance and be detached and cold, or else your theories about what the artifacts are will get in the way and prevent you from seeing what’s really there.” He sounded sane as he spoke the theories that Invisible Heldeson had taught him, he knew, and for a second he thought he was getting back to normal. Then the anger broke loose again. “I already have trouble doing that! I broke down at the first challenge!”  
  
“I think that you’re wrong,” Potter whispered, which only fueled Draco’s contempt, because like  _he_ understood the way things worked in the Unspeakables and the way people were promoted. “You don’t have to be absolutely detached to work with Dark magic. I learned that in the Aurors. You have to know what Dark magic does to people and how it ruins their lives, or you’ll probably be tempted to use it yourself.”  
  
Draco snorted. “That view is  _so_ primitive.” At least, from the expression on Potter’s face, Draco’s word choice had surprised him. Draco smiled bitterly at him, and did his best to enjoy the sense of triumph that filled his mind. It would be the last time he felt it, he was sure, once Invisible Heldeson and the Minister heard what he’d done. “Listen, Potter. They might teach you that in the Aurors, but these are the  _Unspeakables._ What you were outside the Department of Mysteries doesn’t matter.”  
  
“So that’s why you did it.” Potter frowned a little at him. “I wondered why how you could just give up everything you were and turn against your heritage, but you did it because you didn’t think that heritage was worth anything. And because it wouldn’t advance you anymore, with your name in the mud after the war. That makes more sense.”  
  
Draco gave a choked little laugh and dropped his head into his hands. “Yes, it would be like you to gloat over me,” he muttered. “Because you know that I can’t resist you now, and because you’ve always despised me.”  
  
Hands closed on his arms and tugged him nearer. Draco stumbled hard, and stared up into Potter’s face. Potter bent close to him, and his eyes flared the same deep green as some of the Forest branches untouched by sunlight.  
  
“No one who can respond that way to my magic is someone to  _despise_ ,” Potter said, and his fingers hooked beneath Draco’s chin, tugging his face up. “Or someone I need to feel sorry for. Why don’t  _you_ stand up and admit that you’ve failed as an Unspeakable, but it’s not a goal that you should ever have tried for in the first place? It’s not for you. It doesn’t matter how much sense it makes for someone else. You have gifts to offer someone who can actually see them and help you find your place in the world.”  
  
Draco snarled and struck out, slapping Potter’s hand from his face. It was something a true Unspeakable would never have done, but he had admitted, to Potter and himself, to whom it most counted, that he was a failure as an Unspeakable. That meant that he could do whatever the fuck he liked.  
  
“You only like me because you think you can control me,” he told Potter, who continued to stand in front of him with his eyes so green that they were painful. “You don’t really want the boy back who taunted you and made fun of you because you had no parents. How could you? I know exactly what I’m worth, and it’s what the Unspeakables made of me.”  
  
“And you’ll do—what? If it turns out that you’ve failed at that.” Potter leaned towards him, his nose leading the way. “Commit suicide? Walk away and hide yourself in the ruins of your family’s home? Try to convince the Unspeakables that they should take you back by acting as their addled little pawn?”  
  
Draco laughed raggedly. “They gave me a chance already. They might give me a chance again.”  
  
“Can’t you see that it’s all nonsense? That they’re using you and don’t care what happens to you?” Potter came close to him on silent feet, and if Draco hadn’t already been looking at him, he would have had no idea that he was there. He bent down in front of Draco and looked him sternly in the eye. Draco could feel the aura that rode around with him at all times stir and reach out. He didn’t think this was the same as Potter’s magic, the one that apparently soothed his allies and broke his enemies. This was just a natural—  
  
 _Attraction_.  
  
Draco tensed a little. What if the Ministry had known that about him, that he would be susceptible to Potter’s pull, and had sent him here anyway, because that was the best role he could play? He could become Potter’s trusted ally, and then strike at the heart of him from that close.  
  
But then reality came back and scattered Draco’s confused thoughts, and he snorted bitterly. No, he had never been that important. He knew he hadn’t. He had been trained for one specific thing; the Ministry hadn’t known, couldn’t have known, that Potter would find him fascinating enough to go on with instead of simply ignoring or killing him. He had to stop pretending that the Ministry had known exactly what they were doing. There were multiple, conflicting agendas here, what Minister Hinsley wanted and what the Unspeakables wanted him to do and what the person who had first proposed him for the mission—if it wasn’t Minister Hinsley—wanted him to do.  
  
“Can’t you see that it’s nonsense?” Potter repeated more insistently. He held his hands out, and Draco stared at them, at the short stubby fingers and the palms ingrained with dirt from working in the garden and the ragged nails that would turn him into a werewolf with one scratch in animal form. “You could come here. The magic that soothed you says you would be an acceptable member of the pack. You could build a life. It’s not much, it’s not what you were used to, but it would be an honest life. It would be better than what the Ministry would offer you.”  
  
Draco snapped his neck up with a gasp. “Why would you offer me something like that?” he whispered. “When you know good and well that I just tried to betray you?”  
  
Potter relaxed, eyes a little confused, as if he understood the words but not the point of the question. “What do you mean?”  
  
“What makes you think that your pack would accept me?” Draco waved a hand at the walls. “Or you? Why would you want someone who just walked into your pack one day? Why would you offer sanctuary to an old enemy?”  
  
“That’s how Lisa got here,” Potter said. “You remember, you met her a few times. She was looking for a pack but didn’t know exactly where mine lived, but she walked in, drawn by the tug of my magic, and decided to stay. I want you because I can fight for you.”  
  
“You know how useless I am, if you really believe what you’re saying,” Draco whispered. “And that I break under pressure.”  
  
“You could have time in my pack to  _recover_ from pressure.” Potter stared at him, but Draco looked away from those commanding eyes that would try to make him believe what he didn’t want to believe. “I wouldn’t put it on you. I wouldn’t try to make you do anything that you didn’t want to.”  
  
Draco turned further away, staring down at his hands. Why would the offer tempt him so much? He needed to go back to the Department of Mysteries, to return to his real work there—  
  
The work that he had already admitted to himself he couldn’t do. He couldn’t stay sufficiently detached from the artifacts. All the training and time the Unspeakables had put into him was useless.  
  
The realization had been there, he had thought it, spoken it, but now it pierced him inside, and he felt as though he was falling through the remnants of a spiderweb into an abyss. He drew a shuddering breath, knowing that any second it would break its way into dry sobs.  
  
“Draco?”  
  
Potter’s hand was on his arm, and Draco shook him impatiently away. He wanted to be alone to try and deal with this.  
  
Even if there was no way to deal with it. Even if the Ministry had used him and he would have to simply accept it.  
  
“Leave me alone, please,” he said rapidly when Potter opened his mouth. “ _Please_.”  
  
There was some more silence, and then a hand pressing down on his shoulder. A few seconds later, Potter slipped across the guest quarters and out the door.  
  
Draco curled up next to the bed, pressing his face to the sheets. All the realizations tumbled through his mind like shards of broken glass, distinct and so sharp, piercing him every time he thought he was free of them.  
  
 _The Ministry used me._  
  
 _I gave up everything for the Unspeakables, and I failed._  
  
 _How can I go back to being a useless Malfoy?_  
  
 _What am I going to do now?_


	13. Break Down the Walls

Harry hesitated outside the guest quarters. He knew that Malfoy had wanted to be left alone, but he felt as if he  _should_ go back inside and tell Malfoy that he could have whatever he needed—a guide to the Apparition point, or his parents summoned, or something else.  
  
 _And this is quite different treatment for someone you were thinking of only half an hour ago as a potential source of trouble.  
  
_ Harry sighed. He would defy a lot of people not to feel pity for Malfoy after they had seen him suffer a breakthrough and a breakdown at the same time.  
  
Well. Ron and Hermione could probably resist the pity. And Ninian, and Malfoy’s superiors, or they would never have abused him that way in the first place.  
  
Harry could feel the growl rising in his throat. Treatment like Malfoy’s disgusted him. Conflicts with other werewolves had made him unable to stay in the first few packs he’d tried, but another reason was that he despised the way that “leaders” sometimes treated their subordinate werewolves. They acted as if they didn’t matter, as if the only satisfaction to be got out of life was flashing their teeth and eating first.  
  
Being a leader meant so much more than that, if it was done right.  
  
But at the moment, Malfoy wanted to be left alone, and Harry knew that he wouldn’t do any good going back in and questioning him. So he went off to be a leader, reassuring the members of his pack that Malfoy hadn’t betrayed them too badly, and talking to Sarah Woolwine. After Ninian, she was the strongest opposition to his leadership. Time to sound her out on if she wanted to fight him, too.  
  
*  
  
Draco lost track of how long he lay there. Most of the time, he would know, if only because the Unspeakables had to have a good time sense when working in their windowless, unmarked Department, but his internal clock had broken just like so many other things about him had.  
  
 _My ability to feel sorrow seems to be unimpaired.  
  
_ Draco gave a sharp grimace and drove his hands into the bedspread, picking himself upright. He looked around the guest quarters. Nothing showed any sign of intrusion in the last—few minutes, or hour, or whatever it had been. Then again, he’d been so miserable, and drifting through the grey shoals of his own misery, that he thought a whole procession of werewolves could have trooped through, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed.  
  
Draco sighed and ran a hand through his hair, staring at the way the bright strands curled around his fingers. He couldn’t remember the last time his hair had been this messy. He couldn’t remember the last time he had broken down and cried.  
  
And now his stomach ached with hunger. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened, either. He ate at regular times in the course of an ordinary day, carefully scheduled. Since he had been here, the pack had fed him well and regularly, too.  
  
Draco rested his head in his hands. They still trembled. He wondered what he was going to  _do_. At the moment, it seemed more likely he would be sacked for failing to complete his diplomatic mission than because he had showed his emotions, but even if they took the pressure off him for some reason and assigned someone else to the mission, he wouldn’t last back in the Department.  
  
He loved what he did. It had been a chance offered to him for inscrutable reasons; he knew they hadn’t wanted him for his family connections, because, by that point in time, no one did. They had thought he could be trained. They had thought he was smart enough to be _worth_ training.  
  
He thought again of Potter’s offer for a place in the pack, and snorted bitterly.  _He doesn’t think I’m worth it, or that I belong here. He’s only offering it to me out of pity.  
  
_ That led him back to the notion of what he was going to do. His thoughts circled warily around it like a fish for minute after minute until Draco tugged sharply on his hair and ordered himself to focus. He had to know what  _wasn’t_ going to happen, as well as what was.  
  
What wouldn’t happen: him crawling back to the Ministry and begging to be given another place. He had spent long enough doing that.  
  
Another thing that wouldn’t happen: him crawling back to the Manor and huddling there for the rest of his life. Or committing suicide.  
  
Draco paused, and lowered his hands from his hair. He swallowed, blinked, and looked again into the dusty corners of the small house as though that would give him the answer.  
  
In truth, the answer was inside him, and he didn’t know what surprised him more: his inclination to live, or the fact that he had fallen so low suicide had ever seemed like an  _option_.  
  
Draco shuddered and shook his head. No, it wasn’t going to happen to him. He wasn’t going to give up on his life just because that would make some people comfortable. No, damn it,  _no_.  
  
 _Well, it’s fine to think that,_ he decided sarcastically a second later.  _That doesn’t actually give you something to do.  
  
_ Draco took a deep breath. All right, he didn’t want the place Potter had offered him in the pack. He didn’t want to be a werewolf. Besides, he didn’t want to live in the Forbidden Forest for the rest of his life.  
  
On the other hand, it might offer him a place to retreat to if he needed it. Pity would at least mean Potter was unlikely to kick him out. And Draco didn’t think that most of the other werewolves cared enough about him to demand that Potter kick him out.  
  
So. He had a place that he could live for a while, if not stay permanently. What did he want most, besides that?   
  
This time, the answer was immediate.  _Revenge.  
  
_ It was something an Unspeakable would never be allowed to seek. But he was shit at being an Unspeakable.  
  
 _Maybe not shit at being a Malfoy, though,_ he decided a second later.  
  
A Malfoy would take revenge and laugh in delight. A Malfoy would make sure that no one who had hurt him would manage to walk away and rejoice in it. A Malfoy would be someone that no one would think they could take advantage of, ever again.  
  
Draco frowned a little. He had given up his heritage. How sure was he that he could reclaim it? That people wouldn't laugh in his face if he announced that he was coming back to reclaim it?  
  
 _That's another way you could approach things, though. You could do it in secret, the way that your enemies did the vast majority of their actions against you. You would make sure that no one could laugh at you that way. Until the moment when you confronted them and they thought you could do them no harm. Until the moment when they started to laugh and found their mouths stuffed with blood.  
  
_ Draco's back straightened slowly as he thought about that. His hair seemed to hang less limply around his face, and even his hunger was less noticeable.  
  
Yes. That was the way. If he reclaimed his heritage in secret and said to no one that was what he was doing, then he would have the consolation of both triumph and privacy.  
  
Draco sighed and gave a little stretch of his arms. He felt more alive and more clear-headed than he had felt in a long, long time.  
  
Perhaps it was time to go visit Potter, and see how serious he was about his offer of sanctuary in the pack. And some food.  
  
*  
  
Harry studied Woolwine in silence for a few minutes. They had eaten lunch at her house, with the host providing the meal, as usual. Woolwine had harvested berries from her garden recently, so that meant a lot of tart fruit and some milk and not much else.  
  
"What would make you truly happy in the pack?" he asked her, while Woolwine looked at him with eyes as fathomless as a wild wolf's. "I don't want to lose you, but I thought you were unhappy for a lot of the same reasons as Ninian, and so you might not stay now that you know he's left."  
  
"It's not his presence that I need to content me." Woolwine stirred restlessly, a ripple of motion that ran down her shoulders and mostly lodged in the middle of her spine. "He was a troublemaker. I'm glad to see him gone."  
  
Harry bit his lip to hold back the hysterical laughter at her hypocrisy, and nodded. "Very well. So what would make you consider the pack your home?"  
  
Woolwine sat there so long that Harry began to believe he wouldn't get an answer, just another attempt to dance around the truth. But finally she looked up and said, "You treating me like someone who matters, instead of an obstacle to be struggled around."  
  
Harry eased slowly back into his chair, intrigued. "I thought you were the one who was all for the old traditional rules that said no one else could be equal to the leader."  
  
"I know you aren't as stupid as that," said Woolwine, her hands closing down hard enough to rip her nails across the table. "I'm not asking for you to make me into another leader, or even you second-in-command. But the old leaders, they respected me. They saw me as someone who could offer them advice about the continuity of the traditions in the pack. You tossed me aside because you wanted to make your own rules."  
  
Harry thought about that. He wouldn't have put it the same way, but he supposed it was fair. Yes, he hadn't been interested in giving Woolwine any credit. She had been one of the werewolves who was utterly horrified at the way he used challenge rules to  _win_  instead of play silly political games. He had assumed that everything which came out of her mouth would be equally silly.  
  
"If I started treating you like your opinion was worth more, would that be enough to change the past?"  
  
"I would remember it," said Woolwine, her eyes burning a little more, and Harry braced himself for a bad outcome. "So I would recognize anyone else who started using the same excuse to turn against you."  
  
Harry laughed and held up one hand in surrender. "Fine. As long as you don't spread rebellion in the pack anymore, I'll do my best to listen to you and respect what you have to say. But I do expect no more constant little prickling challenges to my authority, understand? No sidling up to newcomers or negotiators sent by the Ministry and hinting that I shouldn't be in control of the pack."  
  
"Why would I undermine a leader who respects me?"  
  
Harry had to admit that was a good answer, although he also noticed that she hadn't said "that I respect." He supposed Woolwine's respect was harder to come by than her mere good opinion.  
  
But this was a good beginning, and he reached for the wooden cup of heavy mead that had stood by them on the table all this while, waiting for the moment when Harry would either drink it himself or with her. Woolwine tensed in a way that he hadn't known she still would, eyes locked on the cup.  
  
Harry held it out to her. "Will you share this drink with me in acceptance of a good bargain driven?"  
  
Woolwine's hand trembled for only a moment as she grasped the cup, but it was a moment that Harry intended to remember, along with the thick flutters of scent from her. This had been a lot more important to her than he'd realized. "I will." She swallowed the mead with a scissoring motion of her throat, and handed the cup to him, letting out a grunt when he swallowed in turn.  
  
“As much as I hate to interrupt this touching moment, Potter, I do have something to ask you.”  
  
Woolwine grunted again, but Harry didn’t think it was with approval this time. She scrambled to her feet instead, lips parted and teeth bared as she stared at the man in front of her.  
  
Harry stared, too, but for a different reason. Intellectually, he knew the reason he hadn’t sensed Malfoy’s approach was that he had been too focused on the important bargain with Sarah. But it was really like seeing someone completely new appear in front of him, especially when he could smell him and see him now.  
  
And he liked both what he smelled and what he saw.  
  
Malfoy had a harder edge to his face that was familiar, but only in a way that a photograph might be when compared to the real thing. Harry had wished for the boy who had taunted him, who had made plans, who had  _been alive_  when they were together in school, to come back. And now he had, and it was obvious that he was a man, a boy no longer.  
  
Why he had never decided to be that man before, Harry had no idea. The important thing was that he was, now.   
  
“Yes, what is it?” Harry finally asked, when he realized that Malfoy was waiting for him to speak in response to Malfoy’s initial question. Waiting condescendingly, looking down his nose, but waiting. Harry shook his shoulders and tried to recover some of the authority that Woolwine had just agreed to obey. “Are you leaving?”  
  
“For a time,” said Malfoy. “I wanted to talk to you about the offer of sanctuary in your pack that you made to me. Is it still open?”  
  
Woolwine turned around with her eyes wide and betrayed. “Unspeakable Malfoy has been misinformed by his superiors,” Harry told her, deciding that words like “used” and “manipulated” would get Malfoy angry at him, no matter how true they were. “I told him that he was welcome to stay here in the pack if he liked.”  
  
Woolwine paused, no doubt hearing all the things he  _hadn’t_ put into that offer, like turning Malfoy and making him a full member of the pack. A second later, she nodded and melted away, her footsteps on the path that led out of his clearing deliberately heavy. She wanted Harry to know that she was leaving instead of staying to eavesdrop.  
  
Malfoy gave no sign of caring about her. “After I handle some of my business affairs, I’ll come back,” he continued. “What I want to know is if you’ll provide me with a safe space to launch my attacks from.”  
  
“Are you going to drag my pack into your feud with the Unspeakables?” Harry had to ask, as reluctant as he was to disregard the spectacle of Malfoy shining in front of him. “I can’t afford to anger the Ministry any more than I already have.”  
  
Malfoy gave him a shining, contemptuous smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t dream of asking you to go beyond the natural limits of your interference.”  
  
“What the hell does that mean?” Harry asked, feeling magic surge along his spine and down his shoulders, a little like the way it had before the challenge against Ninian. He was tired from that, still. It had been a long day. But dangers to his pack didn’t vanish just because he was tired. “I’ve tried to give you—”  
  
“A chance,” Malfoy interrupted. “You haven’t dealt with me the way you would have with any other negotiator, right from the beginning. And whatever enemies you had in the Ministry before I arrived, I didn’t create. I don’t think they’ll let you alone no matter what I do.” He leaned forwards, planting one foot on the bench where Woolwine had sat. “I ask that you stand by the natural consequences of your behavior, and protect me from the Ministry if they come calling.”  
  
“If they come here, I can do that,” said Harry. “I’ll just be defending the pack’s territory. If they attack you at home or wherever you’re planning on going, then I can’t do anything about that.”  
  
Malfoy gave him a single slashing glance, and then nodded. “Yes, fine, I accept that. I’ll try not to lead trouble back to you, but I can’t really provide you with any other guarantee.” He paused, then smiled. “You’re regretting offering me a sanctuary?”  
  
“Not nearly as much as I would if I made that offer and you still didn’t find yourself.”  
  
Malfoy squinted at him. “This doesn’t have much to do with you. The Ministry and my bosses manipulated me and you at the same time. I broke free of their lies. I would have done that without you.”  
  
Harry suppressed the urge to retort that Malfoy wouldn’t ever have faced up to his responsibilities without Harry challenging him, and instead snorted. “Fine. Go and come back, and try to lead your enemies here, would you? It’s the only place I can actually stand beside you without the pack or the Ministry thinking I’m trying to do something I shouldn’t.”  
  
Malfoy, who was turning away as smoothly as a waterfall flowed, froze suddenly. “Stand beside me?” he asked, in what sounded like a croak.  
  
“I thought that’s what you were talking about. I did offer you sanctuary, after all.”   
  
Malfoy released a long, tense breath. “I’m not used to hearing it phrased that way,” he said absently, which made Harry think he had some strange allies. “All right. Yes. I’ll come back, and you’ll stand beside me.”  
  
Harry didn’t really have the chance to concoct an appropriate reply before Malfoy was gone. But maybe he didn’t have to. Harry leaned back in his seat slowly, his eyes closing and his smile coming out.  
  
The Minister, or whoever had really chosen Malfoy for this mission, would probably live to regret the day they had done so.  
  
Draco Malfoy was back.  
  
*  
  
When he was sure he was distant enough from the pack’s territory that no one would see—or smell—him, Draco slowed down and pressed his hands to his flushed cheeks.  
  
He had spoken to Potter as he would to any temporary ally in politics, and Potter had responded as one. Trying to claim that he had never promised as much as Draco was trying to hold him to, being difficult and loud and obstinate.  
  
And then…that simple phrase, assuming it was his duty, his responsibility, to stand beside Draco, as if he was part of Draco’s family, the only people Draco had known that kind of whole-hearted support from.  
  
 _Think about it later,_ Draco advised himself, and began once again to stride towards the Apparition point. If he no longer felt he walked alone quite as much as before, that was his own private business.


	14. Avenge the Insult

Draco came to a stop at the Apparition point in front of Malfoy Manor, and spent a few moments studying it in silence. He didn’t even touch the iron fence that ran around the grounds as yet. For right now, he wanted to contemplate the place he had grown up in and come from without distractions.   
  
The Manor still stood behind its gates and wards, untouched—from the outside. Draco was the only one likely to come here who would know that it had lost all its house-elves, just like his family had lost most of their money in the waves of “reparations” after the war. The house was decaying now, the way that any old house not protected by magic would. Draco hadn’t been here in years. It was too depressing.  
  
Silence came from the house, and Draco could feel that same silence echoing in depressed little ripples through the wards. They endured for now, and would probably last longer than the stones themselves, but only in ghost form. Already they weakened, without a wizard to live inside them and give them heart, and strengthen them when they needed it.  
  
That was what they didn’t understand, the people who hadn’t grown up in houses like this, and who denied themselves the knowledge of the wizarding culture that had raised such homes. The wards and the house-elves and the grounds might be separate from the wizards on a physical level, but not on a magical and emotional one. Without wizards of the appropriate family to serve, house-elves would descend into madness. Without a wizard to protect, the wards would attain their own version of madness. And the grounds would decay.  
  
Draco stood there and noted the thin dark wavering of ivy up the sides of the Manor, the way that whole trees had sprouted on the grounds as if they’d had decades to grow there, and the derelict breath of the wards. Then he brushed his hand down the gates.  
  
There was a sensation like someone drawing in and holding a breath. Then a chime shuddered through the whole Manor. The ground under Draco’s boots warmed. He heard a crack as some of the ivy froze and fell off the side of the house.  
  
Then the ground was open before him, the gates swinging wide down a path that had suddenly lost the shade of monstrous trees.  
  
Draco nodded graciously to the powers that watched him, and walked forwards, down the path that was made of gravel softly crackling underneath his bootheels. The ivy above him reached down with one tendril and touched him as he passed, and then shriveled. The wards were brighter and stronger when he glanced back. Draco smiled and laid his hand flat in the middle of the front door, beneath the knocker that was carved in a large M.  
  
There was a shudder, a sway. The knocker changed shape into a silver dragon, and rose and flung itself against the door. This time, the chime was audible, and the door swung open. Draco entered his home.   
  
Draco could feel the house stirring to life around him, whispering puddles of dust spiraling away from his feet, windows clouded with grime or plants glowing, and the walls brightening to a shine that showed off the portraits and mirrors that hung on them. Draco let his hands trail down the walls, ignoring the dust that gathered on his fingers. This was the first step in reclaiming his heritage. He had stayed away because—  
  
 _Because the Unspeakables convinced me that my heritage was worthless. They weren’t the only ones, but they completed the work the war had started. Every time I said something about my family in training, they told me that was pretentious and against the spirit of the work. They broke my pride._  
  
Draco knew it wasn’t personal. They had done it in different ways to different trainees, humiliating them for their intelligence or wealth or whatever they had been proud of. But that didn’t make the anger that burned in him now less.  
  
 _They made us less proud so that we would be humble and easy to manipulate. So we would be less likely to take artifacts and keep them for our own. So that we wouldn’t seek to advance on our own ambition, but wait for the approval of the Department and ask them for everything._  
  
Draco halted in the middle of the arched doorway that gave entrance to the dining room. Here he had seen the Dark Lord’s snake devour the Muggle Studies professor, a memory that had haunted him for years. But as he looked out into the room, he thought he could accept the past. Everything that had happened here was intense, carving little ripples and grooves in his memory, but he would rather have those memories than the blank dullness the Unspeakables had tried to instill in him.  
  
 _The minute they put me in a situation where I had to use my own pride and my own degree of intelligence, I faltered. I couldn’t do anything. They made me weaker, not stronger._  
  
That did argue that it wasn’t Invisible Heldeson or any of the other Unspeakable superiors who had chosen him for that mission. Then again, Draco had known that from the time Minister Hinsley came to visit him. And he suspected, now more than ever, that his past rivalry with Potter had a lot to do with it.  
  
 _They didn’t value me for myself. They didn’t even know how to wield me as a weapon, because so much of my pride was beaten down that I couldn’t just go in there and plan to undermine Potter the way that I would have when I was still proud of being a Malfoy. They tossed me in there and expected something to happen without a plan, and when it didn’t happen, they blamed me for it._  
  
Draco curled his lip. They had treated him with contempt—the same contempt he regarded them with now. How many times had Invisible Heldeson emphasized, over and over, that the greatest treasure the Unspeakables could have was a trained mind? But she hadn’t kept her word. She had turned on Draco simply because he had obeyed the precepts they’d taught him, trying to keep himself focused on the job and nothing else. So it was only certain kinds of trained minds they valued. When another Department in the Ministry wanted an individual, they would give him up without a qualm, as long as they got to keep their secrets and their artifacts.  
  
 _Well. Now I can use the same skills and detachment that they trained into me and turn them against them._  
  
Draco walked through the dining room and into a corridor beyond it, where he turned sharply left. Even though the windows were shining along the length of this corridor the same way they were elsewhere in the Manor, there was still a sense of brooding darkness here that Draco liked and his ancestors had encouraged. Draco finally came to a stop in front of a small door set deep in the wall, its edge exactly flush with the wall itself, and took a deep breath.   
  
The runes carved on the door exhaled a sense of cold when he reached out to lay his hand on them. Until recently, this would have been as close as he could come to the treasure behind the door. Only the head of the Malfoy line could handle it, and that had been Draco’s father.  
  
But Lucius had given up all responsibility and care for the Manor. Draco had known that intellectually. It had taken coming here for him to confirm it; the Manor would never have so warmed and thrummed around him if it would still respond only to Lucius.  
  
So he curled his fingers as though he would turn the handle-shaped rune in the door, and murmured, “My birthright has come.”  
  
The handle-shaped rune glowed for a moment, gold instead of silver, the color of the rest of the runes on the door, and the cold that it had radiated turned into soft warmth against Draco’s skin. Draco swallowed and pulled his hand back, making sure the shadow of his fingers fell squarely on the rune.  
  
The rune glowed one more time, and then sank entirely into the door, forming a thin line of light on it that looked like the thin lines you got more generally around a door. Draco pulled again, and this time it opened.  
  
The alcove it had protected was a single niche, carved of black stone that made Draco’s breath turn into frost until he fully ducked inside. Then it warmed up the same way the rune had. Draco half-knelt, half-crouched there and gazed into the niche, glad that the legends and tales his father had told him were true after all.  
  
The structure inside looked like a simple cube at first, made of crystal like so many of the artifacts Draco had worked with, but it had silver lines carved into its sides that created a series of geometric figures. Then, Draco’s eyes watered as he realized the lines ran through the  _inside_ of the cube. Then he saw them bending back on each other and throwing shadows and achieving angles that were simply impossible even with the clarity of the cube. Then he saw them as a series of tangles or ripples spreading out from a center, a small silvery dot, that floated in the middle of the cube.   
  
Draco closed his eyes before he could see any more. He knew now why so many outsiders had failed to handle the cube properly, even Malfoys who had believed they had succeeded to the headship of the family line. It was hard to pick your way through that maze of light and shadow. The center might not even exist. The shapes would be different in half a minute’s time. It was a good way to guard the artifact’s power, which was considerable even by the standards Draco had learned as an Unspeakable, and make sure that only the strong of will would even consider using it.  
  
Luckily, that training as an Unspeakable now would enable him to control the artifact and channel its power. He stayed there, breathing, until he was in the cool grey frame of mind that Heldeson had trained him into. The artifact wouldn’t find a hold in his mind with fear or temptation to twist his thoughts.  
  
Then he reached out.  
  
The cube made his hand cool the instant he touched it. Draco refused to let that bother him. He had come to claim this artifact as the current head of the Malfoy line, the only one in the world with the  _right_ to touch it. It could hurt him. He respected its power. But he had respected the power of all the other things he had handled and touched and reshaped in the Department of Mysteries, and that did not mean fleeing in terror.  
  
He reached up with his other hand and grasped the other side of the cube. For a moment, the slithering of the silvery lines on the cube against his hand felt like the twisting of snakes. He ignored that and cradled the cube in front of him, at chest height. After a few moments, he opened his eyes and looked into it.  
  
The silvery lines writhed once more, an enchanting tangle that could draw someone in and drown him. Then they calmed, and Draco saw a maze staring up at him—the map of a maze, something he could thread.  
  
Draco smiled. The cube could create a maze of protective wards for the Manor, and a map to every secret in it, and that was the reason it had been saved to be handled only by the head of the line.  
  
But he intended to do something else with it, to fuse his Unspeakable training and a Malfoy artifact into a weapon the Department of Mysteries would never forget.  
  
 _They lied to me. They offered me a place that they said my training would fit me for, and then they threw me away the minute the Minister asked for me. The value they placed on me was a lie. They might have people who still hate me for my family name—_  
  
Draco gave an impatient little shrug and soothed the anger back into nothingness. Whether they hated him or had done it for some other reason, he would find that out later. What mattered was that he had the ability to take revenge on them now, and the tool that would do it would be complete in a few days.  
  
And then…  
  
Then, he would take revenge. Oh, he  _would_.  
  
*  
  
“But the Unspeakable isn’t going to suffer for betraying us?”  
  
Harry had called a meeting of the whole pack just in case anyone wondered why Malfoy had vanished, and explained the situation as best as he could without getting into details that were too personal. The pack had listened in silence while he explained that Malfoy had been manipulated into being a negotiator when he had no skill at it, and therefore it was more than likely that someone in the Ministry wanted the negotiation to fail. All of that was true, as far as Harry knew. What else might have happened in Malfoy’s mind and heart, Harry didn’t know much about, and would have kept to himself if he did know.  
  
He didn’t think it was betrayal of the pack. He had told Malfoy how much he would put himself out, and it was clear that Malfoy was going to turn against the faction in the Ministry—whichever one it was—who had used him. That meant his enemies would be Harry’s.  
  
The pack had heard him out in silence, most of them gathered around him in a ring on the grass. It was Lisa who spoke up first, with a slight frown and shake of her head that told Harry how deeply she was disturbed. Most of the time, she wouldn’t have said anything against any of his decisions.  
  
“But why should we help this Malfoy? It’s strange that the Ministry wanted to use him, but it should be of no concern to us.”  
  
“This is the part where I have to speculate,” Harry said, looking at Sarah to see if she had anything to add. She stood still and looked at him benevolently, however, so he went on. “I think that they wanted to use Malfoy mainly because he and I were once rivals. Nothing else makes sense. I don’t know anything about Unspeakable artifacts.  _He_ didn’t know anything else. As far as I can work out, he didn’t even go on missions to find artifacts. He just worked with them and made them into other things.”  
  
“Did you ask him that?” That was June Norcom, raising herself on her elbows.  
  
“No,” said Harry. “That, admittedly, is an impression I only got from his being utter pants when confronted with a real situation.”  
  
June chuckled, but she didn’t take her eyes from him, either. “I think that you’ve neglected to ask him some hard questions. Questions that you would have asked of other negotiators who had come so close to betraying our secrets to the Ministry.”  
  
“Yes, that’s true,” said Harry. “And I think it’s because of the personal relationship I had with him before. There’s no one else we’ve come in contact with who was like that.”  
  
“You seem to be calling a rivalry a personal relationship,” said Sarah, looking at him and then looking elaborately down at her fingernails.  
  
“Well, I have a talent for letting even people who annoyed me find a place in my life,” said Harry, and waited until she looked up before he smiled. “But as far as that part of the Ministry’s plan goes, it was brilliant. Malfoy provoked me like few other people have done. I doubt they thought that I would give him so many chances, though.”  
  
June stirred restlessly. “You keep talking about  _they_. Who do you mean? The Minister? The Unspeakables?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry admitted. “That’s one thing that Malfoy wanted to find out, and I hope he succeeds. I know that this goes beyond Tyr Thornsberry, though. Otherwise, Malfoy would have left when I gave him my first answer about intending to invite him into the pack, or focused more on persuading me not to do that.”  
  
“How do we find out more than this?” Sarah was listening to him intently again, her eyes gleaming. “No offense, sir, but I don’t want to depend just on someone from outside the pack to bring us information.”  
  
“For the moment,” said Harry, “let me use my contacts in the Ministry. They’ve served us in the past,” he added, seeing the skeptical eyes trained on him. “But I’ll wait just a day for them to get back to me. Otherwise, we can set other efforts in motion.”  
  
They nodded slowly. Harry knew that he might not have got them to agree even this quickly, but they’d just seen him fight Ninian, and Sarah, who usually spoke up in opposition to him at meetings like this, was acting agreeable. That prompted some other werewolves who might have caused trouble to go along with her.  
  
 _Now, I just have to convince Paracelsus._  
  
*  
  
Paracelsus took a long time to show up once Harry went into the Forest and called him. Harry was thinking about spilling some of his blood on the ground, an emergency measure, when the shadows trembled in front of him and Paracelsus appeared.  
  
He looked at Harry in a way he never had before, the lines of his face like old bone. Harry waited. When Paracelsus said nothing, Harry gave up and broke the silence. “I’d like you to go to the Ministry and find out who really sent Malfoy to negotiate with my pack, and to what purpose. I don’t think it had much to do with Thornsberry.”  
  
“I’ve been patient,” Paracelsus whispered in response. Harry started. Paracelsus’s voice was running up and down the scale. Harry felt a snarl bubbling to his lips, and repressed the instinct to back away. It would do him no good here. “I’ve taunted and teased and engaged in contests and waited. I want your blood. I want it  _now_.”  
  
“I have no reason to give it to you if you won’t do this for me,” said Harry coldly. “We need that information, and I need to be strong for the battle to come.”  
  
Paracelsus closed his eyes, and his face looked like one of the horrible eyeless masks that Harry had discovered during one of his first cases as an Auror, being sold in Knockturn Alley. He held back a shiver.   
  
“I will find the information for you,” Paracelsus whispered. “And then I will come back, in the evening. There will be no battle, not if you wisely use what I will give you.” His eyes snapped open and focused on Harry. “And when I tell you what I know, you will give me your blood.”  
  
Harry waited, poised, until Paracelsus’s nostrils flared open like his eyes. “Agreed,” he said.  
  
Paracelsus gave him a sarcastic bow and turned, leaping into the trees and vanishing. Harry let out a shaky breath.  
  
Now he just had to figure out a way around  _that_ little problem.   
  
 _It shouldn’t be that hard, for someone who made an alliance with Sarah Woolwine and Draco Malfoy and conquered Frederick Ninian, all in the same day._


	15. Thread the Maze

“I need complete peace and quiet. Can I find it in your pack?”  
  
Harry started. He had nearly dozed off in front of his house, with the fire flickering in front of him and his head drooping between his hands. He leaped to his feet now and stirred the fire up with a single flick of his wand. Its smell competed with the scent of the person who had startled him, but he thought that was a small price to pay when he could use the fire as a weapon and to see better.  
  
And then the potential enemy stepped from the shadows, and turned out to be Malfoy. Harry sighed and sat back down on the bench in front of his cottage.  
  
“I can’t promise that some of my wolves won’t come to see what you’re doing,” he said. “They don’t trust you the way I do.”  
  
Malfoy’s eyes shone strangely at those words, but he nodded. “Are you capable of tightly warding the guest quarters?”  
  
Harry shrugged. “I am, but those kinds of wards would increase the pack’s distrust of you, not decrease it. Why don’t you put up the wards instead?”  
  
Malfoy stared at him in a way that would have signaled a challenge, coming from the pack. Harry managed to restrain himself from reacting, and only watched Malfoy mildly back instead. Malfoy finally said, “And those kinds of wards wouldn’t increase the pack’s distrust?”  
  
“They already think I’m a bit mad to have tolerated you when you intended to betray us to the Unspeakables at first,” said Harry. “I’m the pack leader they have to live under. You’ll either be an ally who’s sometimes here and sometimes not, or someone who leaves and doesn’t come back, in the end.”  
  
Malfoy considered that for long enough that Harry wondered if the Ministry would descend on their heads before he finished thinking it through. In the end, however, he nodded, and turned to the guest quarters. “Don’t let anyone touch or disturb the wards,” he said over his shoulder. “They’ll shock them at the very least.”  
  
“What are you going to work on?” Harry asked. “One of the artifacts they gave you that you’re going to turn against them now?”  
  
He wondered why Malfoy leaped and spun in place to stare at him, and considered drawing his own wand. But a second later, Malfoy relaxed and chuckled grimly.  
  
“You could say that,” he said. “ _An_ artifact.” He nodded and vanished into the guest quarters, saying over his shoulder, “Don’t let anyone disturb those wards, Potter.”  
  
The enchantments shivered into sight a moment later, so complex and complete that Harry suspected he had some kind of artifact with him that powered them. A shield that looked like it was made of sewn silver cloth draped the house from top to bottom, without any seams to allow entrance. Another shield curved from underneath it, and Harry knew from the way it rose from and then dipped into the dirt that it would prevent tunneling creatures from getting inside as well.  
  
Harry grinned. Whatever Malfoy wanted to do, he thought it was going to be impressive.  
  
*  
  
Draco sat down on the bed in the cabin. It was the most comfortable place, minus his own desk and chair, and he needed to leave his body behind while he devoted his mind and magic to the complicated task of subduing the Malfoy artifact.  
  
It pulsed and shimmered softly in his hand. Draco knew it would stop doing that, the way it would lose the map to every secret of the Manor, once he had begun to alter it.  
  
But he had memorized those secrets long ago, and he knew that his ancestors would approve. Whichever way the head of the Malfoy line chose to use this artifact was the correct one. And avenging an insult to his honor was more correct than most.  
  
Draco breathed softly, until he was sure that his breathing came in time with the gentle pulsing of the crystal. He used tools in the Department of Mysteries—hooks that pulled apart tiny moving cogs, probes that dipped into the hidden heart of an artifact and came out dripping with magic, wheels that could forcibly move apart spells whose protection existed in different layers—but he didn’t need them.  
  
The most secret training of the Unspeakables, what Draco thought Invisible Heldeson had been referring to when she talked about the trained mind, consisted of the skills that let them take apart an artifact and reshape it to their purpose with nothing more than their conscious will. It was dangerous, and not many Unspeakables excelled in the art. Most of them only used the artifacts, went on raids to acquire more of them, or learned their secrets and then passed them along to the re-makers without attempting any other experiments on them.  
  
Draco had learned the art.  
  
He let that pride flood his mind, like a crystal torrent of water that gave the power to turn a millwheel but obscured nothing hiding beneath it. Here, the pride would help him instead of distract him as his teachers had feared.  
  
Breath, and breath, and breath. His mind was sinking, wavering into the crystal torrent like the tendrils of some tender plant. He was tumbling down, in a kind of slow, controlled fall that he had dreamed about more than once. This was what flight should be like, part of him had said before he had ridden a broom.  
  
He reached out, and saw fingers that were longer than the ones on his hand curl around the other sides of the cube. Silver light flared to meet and match them, from inside the crystal. Draco breathed, and his fingers of will and imagination grew longer, more curved. They covered the cube completely.  
  
Draco felt its defenses of cold. He smiled. He was a Malfoy, and the chill could not harm him.  
  
The first layer of those defenses withered. Next came the blazing heat.  
  
Draco faced the heat unafraid. He had gone through worse things, and come out of them. The Fiendfyre. The heat of shame after the war, when he first realized how violently the reputation of his family had changed, and what he would have to do to reclaim it. He had given up on that reclamation process at the time, that was true, but not forever. No Malfoy could abandon his heritage forever.  
  
He was here, and he reached out with all the powers that were in him, powers of blood and skill and training, to say that he had the  _right_ to this heritage, and he was going to take it and use it as he saw fit.  
  
The flames sparked and fell. What was left was the maze.  
  
Draco could see the silver lines coiling in front of him, bending back on each other and tangling in impossible shapes in his mind and warping until they could draw his mind into an unending spiral. If he wandered into that spiral, he would be lost. There would be nothing left in his body because there would be nothing for him to come back to. His body and his mind alike would dissolve into the swirl and the flow—  
  
And even thinking about it this poetically, instead of as the peril it was, made him in danger of losing his mind to it. He pulled back sharply and rose on steadily beating wings to the center of the cube, where he hovered.  
  
 _A true Malfoy would not be afraid._  
  
That sounded like the taunting voice of one of his ancestors, but Draco knew it for a trick of his thoughts. The Unspeakables had taught him all about the tricks of his mind, how it was the best deceiver of itself, and that was one of the reasons they didn’t usually ask an artifact’s owners what it did. The owners were the least likely to understand the mysterious and powerful magic they used.   
  
Not commanded. Only those who understood artifacts from the inside out could command them, and few owners grasped the full potential of the prizes they held.  
  
Draco hovered, and cut through the shimmering haze inside the artifact with the power of his trained mind, the power that Invisible Heldeson had told him the Unspeakables so valued. He had seen paths like this before. He had walked them before. He had escaped traps that even the other Unspeakables had fallen into.  
  
 _They betrayed you—_  
  
It was another distraction, here, and Draco banished it. Yes, revenge was his motive, but it mattered only if it could ultimately help him to understand the artifact. He would not die here. It was not his way.  
  
No Malfoy would die here. No trained Unspeakable would die here. And Draco was finally coming to understand that he was both, that no amount of mourning and being blamed by other people and being  _manipulated_ by other people could change that.  
  
Down and down he bore, when he saw the opening in the silver mist that signaled the opening of the maze. Down and down he dived, and he saw the thread unwinding ahead of him, not already formed, the way it had always appeared before when the artifact was dancing deviously with him, but still moving.  
  
Draco hit that with his imagined talons, and rode the rebounding, dizzying, shattering thrill of visions that immediately tore through him. He could see a maze that looked like the center of Malfoy Manor, and he could see a maze like the walls, and he could see faces, and he could see trees, and he could see a whirl of seasons that threatened to destroy his sense of the passage of time forever.  
  
Amid autumn leaves and summer sunlight, amid silver mist and white terror, he halted the whirling, and cracked the secret heart of the artifact open, descending into its magic and forcing that magic to reveal its mysteries, with nothing but will alone.  
  
The artifact trembled and leaned back, split halves hanging. Draco passed delicately into the heart of it, in no danger as he sorted through the silver threads that had made it up.   
  
Those silver threads coiled on a heart so complicated that it took Draco a long moment to work out the simple principles underlying it, principles he knew he had seen before. When he  _fully_ understood it, he felt like laughing. Of course, of  _course._ The heart was really a shimmering silvery fire of the kind that many wizards lit ritually at the heart of their domains when they first built them, a fire that would consume rubbish and contribute power to the building of the house at the same time. No wonder the cube had been linked so intimately with the defenses and the map of the Manor.  
  
Now that Draco knew what the fire did, it was simple enough to gather it up and breathe it along new pathways. And he knew the Department of Mysteries as only an Unspeakable knew it. He started to breathe it out to form a map of the Department.  
  
Then he paused.   
  
If he engaged the Unspeakables in the Department of Mysteries, he would also engage them in the heart of  _their_ strength. Draco didn’t think Invisible Heldeson was smarter than he was, but he knew she knew the Department better. They would have traps in their offices, traps that could easily be turned and aimed against him. They would engage out of sight, and if he lost, they could say anything had happened to him that they liked, without fear of contradiction. Potter might stand up for him if his reputation was tarnished, but he wouldn’t know, any more than any outsider, what exactly had taken place in the darkened corridors and twisting pathways of the Department of Mysteries.  
  
That wasn’t the way Draco wanted to die. Or triumph, for that matter.  
  
All the while he had thought, the silver fire had hovered around him, waiting, obedient to his desires. And so Draco turned now and changed the direction of his breathing, and the silver fire around him whirled up into the images of trees.  
  
He laid paths through the trees, and images of houses, senses and memories he had barely used since he came here giving him the representation of the pack’s territory in the Forbidden Forest to thread through the cube.  
  
The territory blossomed around him, shining, wavering spurts of flame that Draco picked out as delicately as the original threads of silver had run through the cube. Draco stepped back and studied it from the outside at last, and gradually relaxed. Yes, the image was as perfect as he could make it. If necessary, he could study those paths and houses again and make sure that both the way they looked and the maze he would make out of them were realistic.  
  
Draco surfaced at last, and found himself still sitting on the bed, the cube cupped in his hands before him. His arms were trembling violently, and he dropped them back into his lap, his head bowed as he panted.  
  
He knew that only the discipline of the Unspeakables had made him able to both hold up the cube so long and reshape it to his purpose, but that only made him more viciously delighted now. Yes, he would turn their weapons against them, all their weapons, both his trained mind and skills and the weapon they had hoped to make of  _him_.  
  
Now, all he needed to do was tell Potter that he had made his pack’s territory the inevitable battleground.  
  
*  
  
“Potter.”  
  
Harry started and looked up. He had been gardening, trying to bury his doubts and his fears about what he would do once Paracelsus came back and asked for his price in grueling labor. But it meant that, for the third time in two days, Malfoy had managed to startle him.  
  
Malfoy stepped out of the woods in front of him and crouched down in front of Harry, staring into his eyes as though that would tell him something essential about Harry. He clutched a crystal cube in one hand. Harry wrinkled his nose. The cube smelled of magic to him, but twisted and stinking magic, rotten enough to make him wonder what in the world it was and what Malfoy was doing with it.  
  
“I want you to know that the fight will be on your territory,” said Malfoy calmly.  
  
Harry took a step to the side, both to get out of the garden and away from the cube. He didn’t want to crush fragile plants in the actions he might be forced to take. “Excuse me?” he asked quietly, dangerously.  
  
Malfoy looked at him without much inflection in his voice or movement in his face. “This is a cube that once contained a map to the interior of Malfoy Manor, but would become an impenetrable maze to trap the mind of anyone who looked into it and wasn’t the head of the line,” he said, then paused. “There are ancestors stirring in their beds of earth who would be disgusted that I was telling even this much to you, I’m sure.”   
  
Harry had the impulse to smile, but didn’t. Malfoy might be charming or amusing sometimes, but he was the one who had told Harry that his whole pack was now in danger. “Fine. I don’t know why you need to hold a battle on our territory because of that.”  
  
“I made the cube into a trap that will hold the minds of any Unspeakables who try to enter the maze.” Malfoy considered him like a lizard, with still eyes. “But I couldn’t set the trap in the Department of Mysteries. I don’t know it well enough. I  _did_ create a maze and a trap based on your territory, however.”  
  
Harry looked around, wondering if he would smell twisted magic drifting through the trees any second.   
  
“ _Inside the cube,_ ” Malfoy said, voice strained as if any idiot should be expected to know this. “Not literally in your territory.”  
  
“Then I don’t understand how that’s supposed to work,” Harry said. He didn’t really care if Malfoy thought him stupid, he told himself, to stop the prickle of embarrassment creeping up his face. What mattered was protecting his pack, and not betraying his implicit vow to them that Malfoy wasn’t dangerous. “They aren’t going to step inside the cube when they come here.”  
  
“No,” Malfoy agreed. “But I’ll entwine their minds with the map in the cube.”  
  
“How can you be sure that you aren’t going to pull any werewolf minds into the same trap?”  
  
“I’ll make sure of it,” said Malfoy.  
  
“That’s not something I can just tell my pack and expect them to accept it.”  
  
“You said that you would stand at my side.”  
  
Harry curled his lip so he could show off his teeth. It wasn’t a threat he would have used on Malfoy before, fearing to frighten him, but here, he thought Malfoy could stand it. “ _Me_. Not my entire pack. And they won’t be sacrifices for your vengeance.”  
  
Malfoy studied him long enough that Harry really thought he would turn away and simply walk down a path into the forest. Harry was prepared for that to happen. It would be a pity, but Malfoy’s vengeance was less important to him than his pack, even if Malfoy  _himself_ was disturbingly important.  
  
“Very well,” said Malfoy, suddenly and ungraciously. He leaned back and gestured to the cube. “I’ll show you how this works. If you’ll permit me to entrap and then release your mind. It’ll take about an hour.”  
  
“Yes,” said Harry, laying down his gloves and the small trowel he’d been using to dig in the garden. He stepped towards Malfoy. “Do what you need to.” He noticed that Malfoy was staring at him with his mouth open, and added irritably, “What? Did you think I was going to refuse because I was afraid?”  
  
“Because you were cautious, perhaps,” Malfoy said, eyes shielded under his lids again. “Because you know that your pack needs you.”  
  
“I know that there are people here who would hunt you down if you did anything to me,” said Harry simply, and brushed some more dirt off his hands. “And not here. My friends would be willing to believe that you’d done something to me even more than most of the pack would.”  
  
Malfoy closed his fingers around the cube. “But you seemed so concerned about your pack a moment ago.”  
  
“My pack. Not myself. Not as  _much_ about myself,” he corrected, when Malfoy gave him an unimpressed look. “But I also have some magic that allows me to resist artifacts, as you’ve seen.” He gestured on into the woods when Malfoy stood there and continued to look at him. “Are we going to do this or not?”  
  
Malfoy turned his back sharply. “I think I liked you better when you were softer and more sympathetic to me,” Harry heard him mutter. He probably wasn’t  _supposed_ to hear it. It was the kind of thing that would have escaped most human ears.  
  
But Malfoy should have remembered he was dealing with a werewolf. “That was the weaker version of you,” he said cheerfully. “Draco Malfoy, the way he was, can take me.”  
  
Malfoy twitched, but kept walking. Harry grinned at his back. This had an odd tinge of fun to it.  
  
 _Now, if I can just keep Paracelsus from stopping all the fun._


	16. Give the Blood

Harry saw a shadow from the corner of his eye. It was shaped like a darting, scything triangle, but when it wanted to, it grew into the shape of a human head and hands. Well. Almost human.  
  
“Potter.”  
  
It was Malfoy, and Harry turned reluctantly back to him. He knew that Malfoy had promised to test the cube on him, and was currently explaining to him how it worked, and that meant he, not unreasonably, expected Harry’s attention. From the way his eyes darted back and forth between Harry and the edge of the forest, he knew he’d lost it.  
  
And from the sharp prickles of his scent, rapidly growing into some that would make a hedgehog’s seem small, he resented it.  
  
“Yes?” Harry crossed his hands on his knees and tried to ignore the other irritated scent coming to him, the one he knew belonged to Paracelsus. “I didn’t mean to disparage what you were trying to show me. It was dead clever of you to figure it out at all. Please explain some more.”  
  
“Why is a vampire trying to get your attention?”  
  
Harry grimaced. He had known, he supposed, that he couldn’t keep Paracelsus secret forever, especially not from someone like Malfoy who was trained in observation, but he had hoped to last a  _little_ longer than that.   
  
“Because he acts as a spy for me in the Ministry, and we made a bargain that this time, I would pay him with my blood,” said Harry, and sighed. “He and I have had a teasing relationship for a long time, where he tries to kill me or drain me or at least hurt me, and brings me information if I succeed in resisting him.” He stood up.  
  
Malfoy frowned. Harry had expected him to have the same kind of horrified reaction to Paracelsus that Ron and Hermione did, but perhaps he knew vampires well enough to realize that, for them, that  _was_ teasing. “What kind of information did you send him to bring back?”  
  
“I wanted him to ask around about who had really sent you to negotiate with me, and why.”  
  
Malfoy’s posture eased a little, but not much. “I could have found that out for you. If you had let me alone and agreed to let me contact the Unspeakables.”  
  
Harry wanted to bang his head on a rock. Perhaps Sarah, and Ninian in his time, had been right about one thing. Dealing with non-werewolves was more trouble than it was worth.  
  
“You said that you don’t intend to go back to the Ministry. It would be dangerous for you to do that. This way, you get a head start on the vengeance. Isn’t that worth waiting a while for your revenge?” Harry realized that he sounded like he was pleading with Malfoy to accept a bargain, and rolled his eyes. Damn his conscience, anyway. This would be easier if he was like those ancient werewolf leaders who just commanded something to be done, and followed up with claws and teeth if it wasn’t.  
  
“It might be worth waiting,” said Malfoy, his eyes still hard and suspicious. “But I don’t know that you can trust a vampire, and  _I_ don’t know that I can trust an ally that wants to bite you and maybe drain you completely of your blood.”  
  
Harry snorted in spite of himself. “I’m worried that he might drain me completely. It doesn’t mean he will. He was in enough control of himself to wait and collect the information for me before he came back for a drink.”  
  
“He’s not in control now.”  
  
 _No,_ Harry agreed silently, watching as the shadow wavered back and forth at the edge of the clearing. He sighed and turned towards Paracelsus. “I’ll let you demonstrate the cube on me, though,” he told Malfoy. “Right after.”  
  
“If your mind is confused by the blood loss, it won’t give me an accurate result.” Malfoy stood up with a sound that made it seem like he probably had steel in his spine. “I need to see what you’re doing with this vampire.”  
  
Harry sighed, but let Malfoy trail him towards the forest. At least there was a  _good_ difference now, in having Malfoy with him rather than a member of the pack. Harry would have felt responsible for a member of the pack, and wouldn’t have been able to resist the urge to put his body between them and Paracelsus. Malfoy, though Harry didn’t want him wounded, could presumably take care of himself.  
  
*  
  
“Potter.”  
  
Draco felt nerves tingle to life in his body that he hadn’t felt in a very long time. They were nerves tuned to the sound of a vampire’s voice, and especially knowledge about vampires that his parents had been careful to pass down to him.  
  
 _You must never come between a hungry vampire and the one he desires,_ had been one of his father’s lessons.  _Not unless you are prepared with weapons that can kill vampires, and are equally prepared for a duel to the death with him._  
  
Draco knew about hunger, the weaknesses of vampires, the way they would sometimes give up an easy meal in favor of one they had been hunting for a long time. That hunt stood a chance of consuming them, should they let it. They wanted the one they had placed on a plate in front of them. They wanted that victim to yield himself, willingly if they could get it, screaming and struggling if that was the only way they could have him.  
  
And this vampire sounded that way when he spoke Potter’s name.  
  
Draco dropped behind, unobtrusively, but with one hand clutched over the wand in his pocket. Potter didn’t appear to notice. He was walking forwards, his head tilted back so that he could focus his eyes on the tree where the vampire clung.  
  
Draco didn’t think he would be prepared, when the vampire abruptly fell like a thunderbolt from the tree, because no one could be.  
  
But the only thing faster than a hungry vampire, evidently, was a cautious werewolf.  
  
Potter twisted his body around, and leaped from the earth as though someone had hurled him. He was in the limb of the tree that the vampire had sprung from at the same time as the vampire touched the ground, and Draco had the unprecedented experience of seeing a vampire stare around for its next meal, instead of picking it right away and charging from there. For a second, Draco thought the creature might take him instead, and his hand closed on the cube.  
  
But instead, the vampire leaped at Potter again, hands spread so that its fingernails extended out like raking talons.  
  
Potter was already gone from the tree that the vampire slammed into, back on the earth and spinning so fast that his feet scraped divots from the dirt. He took out his wand and whispered something that Draco didn’t recognize, although he was under some disadvantages when it came to hearing the incantation.  
  
By the time the vampire had returned to the attack, a wall of wood and green leaves encircled Potter, a new tree grown from the ground for what seemed the express purpose of shading him. Draco could see him through a transparent but otherwise strong section of the trunk. The vampire stalked around it, tearing strips of bark free with a lashing hand.  
  
“Come,” said the vampire at last, voice so deep that Draco heard the word as between the roar of rumbling rocks in a landslide. “You made a promise. You will not refuse to keep that promise  _now_ , will you?”  
  
Potter didn’t bother responding. He simply leaned his back against the wooden wall behind him, and waited.  
  
The vampire shut its eyes and seemed to regain some control. Then it focused on Potter, and bobbed a head that had mandibles, Draco thought, like an insect’s. “I apologize for my lack of control.”  
  
Apparently that had been all that Potter had been waiting for, because he leaned in and spoke. “I’ve never trusted you not to drain me, Paracelsus. You’ve tried to kill me since you learned who I was. The first time you attacked me, you went for the throat, which doesn’t incline me to think—”  
  
“Many of my kind drink from the throat and leave the human intact.” Paracelsus gave his head an irritated little side-to-side twitch that Draco had only read about in books. Most vampires didn’t converse with their prey like this. Then again, most vampires had more willing prey, Draco thought. “And you are a werewolf. You can heal wounds that would kill humans, even if I did intend major harm.”  
  
“Most of your kind drink from the side of the throat if they intend to leave the prey intact,” said Potter. “Not the front.”  
  
Paracelsus paused, and sat back on his haunches, long limbs folding like he was a dog. “I struck so fast that you cannot possibly have had time to see where I was striking.”  
  
“A werewolf’s eyes see better than a human’s.”  
  
Paracelsus licked his lips with a white tongue. “That is true. Well. This time you made a bargain. You will not break the bargain?”  
  
“The bargain was blood for information,” said Potter. “You haven’t given me the information yet. For all I know, you haven’t even collected any.”  
  
“I did,” said Paracelsus, and for the first time, he sounded injured. He raised one hand from the ground and pressed it against his chest, over what Draco thought was supposed to be his heart, but since he balanced on three other limbs and stared at Potter like a starving thing while he did it, the impact was somewhat diminished. “The information that you want. Who sent Malfoy here.” He snapped his head at Draco.  
  
“Then give me the names,” Potter said, not moving.  
  
Paracelsus showed his fangs. “An equal exchange is what I propose. One name for each sip of blood you allow me.”  
  
Potter didn’t respond, except to come to the front of the wooden cage he’d constructed. Paracelsus came crawling to meet him, his mouth open.  
  
One swipe from Potter’s fist was enough to break the wood. Paracelsus reached through the gap and tugged Potter against the remains of the wood, almost gently.  
  
Potter closed his eyes, and his face settled into a resigned grimace that, Draco had to admit, was also unique in his experience of vampire-victim interactions. Usually, the victim was in a state of dazed pleasure by now. This time, Paracelsus looked like he was the one in that state as he sank his fangs deep in the side of Potter’s throat.  
  
Neither of their expressions changed, except to deepen, into pain and ecstasy. Paracelsus’s throat began to pump, and Potter whispered, “You’ve had more than a sip now. Give me the names.”  
  
“Minister Hinsley,” said Paracelsus, and his tongue slithered out to catch a drop of blood that was escaping down the side of Potter’s neck.  
  
“We already knew about that,” said Potter. Draco, who could feel parts of him freezing into crystalline observation, without the emotion tainting them, the way he often observed artifacts, wondered if he should object to the word  _we_. But Potter, although he breathed through clenched teeth, still sounded calm, normal, soft. “So. Tell us something that we don’t know.  _Someone_ we don’t know about.”  
  
Paracelsus didn’t respond for a long moment. He just went on taking blood. Draco began to move his hand down towards the crystal cube again. He didn’t know if he would be able to entrap an undead mind as easily as a living one. This was the most powerful magical object he had with him at the moment, though, and the best chance.  
  
“Invisible Heldeson,” said Paracelsus, and his eyes closed and rolled back in his skull. The skin stretched across his bones shimmered and looked thicker and healthier, Draco thought. Certainly he was no longer as skeletal as he had been only a few moments ago.  
  
“She didn’t have anything to do with the choice,” said Draco. “She may be conspiring with the Minister to do something, but neither of them was the only mover behind it.”  
  
Paracelsus didn’t seem to have heard him, but Potter, even with the fangs still buried in his skin, gave a sharp tug. Paracelsus’s eyes flew open, and then he sighed and clenched his nails down in the wood. “Give me all of it, and you can have the last name.”  
  
“No,” said Potter. Draco privately agreed. So far, the vampire had told them nothing Draco could not have found out on his own. He was irritated and disappointed, but not really surprised. This was the way that vampires were. They wanted blood, in the end, and they wouldn’t keep promises or bargains, because words and honor didn’t matter to them next to the flow of their victim’s veins. “You’ve had far more than two sips of blood, which were what I would owe you for two names.”  
  
Paracelsus made a low sound, a noise like wind whistling through a flute of bone.  
  
Draco didn’t have a chance to brace himself, although, thinking about it, he didn’t know why  _he_ would have braced himself. That noise was the crooning growl of an attached vampire who intended to drink everything, and Draco wasn’t the one Paracelsus was fastened to.  
  
The next second, Paracelsus wrenched his neck backwards, all his muscles rippling down towards his shoulders, like he was made of a great snake perched on top of a mantis body, and Potter came flying out of the last remains of his wooden shelter.  
  
But Potter had got his hand up, Draco saw. Without trying to pull away from Paracelsus—and probably end up tearing his own throat open in the meantime—he had fastened his hand rather securely around the back of Paracelsus’s skull. In the moment that the vampire put Potter’s feet back on the ground and then leaned in to complete the swipe that would open his throat, Potter clamped his hand down.  
  
Draco had never particularly wanted to hear what crunching bone sounded like. He heard it then.  
  
Paracelsus shrieked and whipped his head back and forth. Draco started up, thinking that would tear open Potter’s throat for sure, but Potter had already turned sideways and slipped free. He ignored the long stream of blood pouring down his neck, which Draco would have found difficult to do himself, and brought his free hand up on the other side of Paracelsus’s head. Then he pushed inwards with both of them.  
  
Draco knew about a werewolf’s strength from close contact (closer than he would have liked) with Fenrir Greyback during the Dark Lord’s tenure in Malfoy Manor, but this was something else again, something that maybe depended on Potter’s status as an alpha or other traits that Draco didn’t understand. Potter’s hands pressed, and pressed, and pressed. There was an almost serene expression on his face, as though he had fled into a personal space where nothing mattered but the task immediately in front of him. And that task was killing a vampire in a way Draco had never heard of.  
  
But so far, it seemed to be working remarkably well.  
  
Paracelsus was wailing, now, his hands scrambling at Potter’s arms. His nails inflicted scoring wounds. Potter ignored them the way he ignored the mark on his throat. Still he pressed down, and the vampire’s skull looked deformed now. Draco shuddered to think what that pressure was doing to his brain.  
  
Then Paracelsus, perhaps in desperation for his life, whipped his neck the way he had whipped it again and sent Potter flying over his head.  
  
Potter had to let go, or he probably would have broken his arms. Draco thought he would be dangerous even with one arm broken, but not two. He landed neatly, though, and crouched, as though he was ready to launch himself again at the vampire from that position.  
  
Paracelsus didn’t give him the chance. He went leaping into the forest instead, his head lowered and his voice floating mockingly back. “Umbridge!”  
  
There was silence, then. A wounded vampire would go even more softly than normal.  
  
Draco shook his head, a little dazed, both by the pace of events and by the sense of the way he was slowly coming back to himself after watching them. He turned to Potter. “Are you all right?”  
  
“Yes,” said Potter, and reached up to scratch the wound on the side of his throat. The blood had already clotted, Draco saw. Probably werewolf magic. They would want to heal quickly, after battles and wounds that fleeing prey might inflict on them. “Do you think that last name he called is true?”  
  
Draco inhaled quietly, and considered. He knew that Umbridge had been demoted from her exalted position after the war, but left in the Ministry. He knew that she probably had a grudge against Potter the size of a planet. He wondered why she would choose  _him_ as her messenger, though. He had believed much the same things as she had during fifth year, and served as one of her Inquisitors.  
  
But maybe the answer was the same as the answer for Invisible Heldeson and Minister Hinsley. They didn’t care much about Draco at all. Potter was the focus, the problem. Draco was their way of trying to provide a solution.  
  
Still…  
  
“If it is true, I can’t believe she would have the same motive as either of the other two,” he said at last, carefully. “She doesn’t care about Minister Hinsley’s son. And she could never be involved in Unspeakable politics. She’s too loud and noticeable for that.”  
  
Potter nodded. “So what we have is competing agendas, maybe. Multiple things they hoped you would do. Multiple promises traded, and maybe people involving themselves after the fact. It would explain some things.” He looked at Draco intently. “The clumsy way they seem to be manipulating you, the late explanations. The plan never went as it should because too many hands were in the same pot.”  
  
“Yes,” Draco said. “That would make sense.” Agreeing with Potter was almost as strange as watching him wrestle a vampire, but both seemed to be required in this case.   
  
“Then perhaps we should do some investigation, before we settle on a way of helping you,” said Potter, clasping his hands and flexing his arms. “Now that I don’t have a Ministry spy, we’ll have to do the looking on our own. Up for it?”  
  
Draco raised his hand to his face, startled by the grin on his own mouth. “Yes,” he said. “I am.” 


	17. Prepare the Web

“I never did get a chance to test the cube on your mind.”  
  
Potter, who was standing in a small clearing in the forest not far from his house, just shrugged. He had come here on purpose, Draco knew, and that purpose had something to do with the politics of the pack. But he hadn’t explained, and Draco wasn’t about to beg for clarification. “I’ll trust you that it will work,” he said. “And without ensnaring the minds of my pack. If it does, I would hurt you.”  
  
The way he said it was what impressed Draco. He had heard threats, including ones from other Unspeakables and from some desperate owners who wanted their artifacts back. But this had no bluster. It was a fact.  
  
Draco was still watching Potter when the first werewolf came walking into the clearing: Woolwine, who had met him on the path when he first came. She looked at him, then at Potter, and said, “Sir, if you listen to me now…”  
  
“I know,” said Potter, without moving any part of his body other than his jaw. “But you’ll have your chance to speak against him. You need to know what’s going on first.”  
  
Woolwine paused, either decided that was fair or couldn’t come up with anything to say against it, and settled on the ground with a faint sniff. Draco saw others come piling in behind her. He kept watching her, though. He thought most of the other werewolves would take their cue from her.  
  
Her or Potter, it seemed. When they saw Draco, they glanced at Potter. Potter only nodded majestically. That made them sit down, but most of them kept at least a foot of distance between them and Draco.  
  
The only exception was Lisa, the woman Potter had tested his magic on in front of Draco. Maybe she thought he had already seen her at her worst. She sat down with her body curved over her knees, everything bent and huddled, except for her gleaming eyes, which fixed on Potter.  
  
“The Ministry is probably going to battle us soon.”  
  
The way that the werewolves reacted to Potter’s announcement made Draco snort. They should have known what was going on—the Ministry sent a negotiator, they sent him back, that negotiator tried to interfere in the smooth running of the pack—but they leaped to their feet and, in a few cases, howled. Draco was proud of himself for sitting still instead of letting memories overwhelm him and make him react badly to that howling. These were not Fenrir Greyback and his kin, and in part of himself, he had remembered that.  
  
Potter waited until the howling died away, then continued. “There’s evidence of a deeper plot than just Minister Hinsley’s against us. Some of you know about the vampire I consort with.”  
  
Draco doubted the phrasing was originally his, and thought that confirmed when Woolwine lifted her head. “Did you finally decide to give him your blood?” she asked, and her nostrils worked as though she was sniffing for some sign of that on Potter’s neck.  
  
Potter simply nodded. “It was in return for information in the Ministry about who was behind sending Unspeakable Malfoy to us. He gave us two names that we already knew about—Minister Hinsley, because of the part that Thornsberry played in attacking his son, and Invisible Heldeson of the Unspeakables, because…” He turned to Draco. “Can you reveal what exactly the Unspeakable interest in this is?”  
  
Draco paused once, not because of old loyalties but to organize his thoughts, and then said, “I don’t think what she told me was the truth. But part of it probably comes from the desire the Department of Mysteries has to cooperate with the other Departments in the Ministry sometimes, because otherwise we—they—would get the reputation as too stubborn to be worth bothering with. If they cooperate, then their thefts of artifacts and the like get tolerated.”  
  
Someone muttered incredulously under their breath, but Potter only nodded, as if he had been aware of political realities like this all along. “And you think that there’s another part?”  
  
“Yes,” said Draco. “Is there anything here—artifact, or magic, or anything like that—that’s unusual or strong or not well-understood? Because that’s the sort of thing the Unspeakables would be interested in.”  
  
For an instant, gazes darted among the werewolves in the clearing as if they all suspected each other of hiding the Sword of Gryffindor. Then Woolwine showed her teeth and said, “I can think of one thing.”  
  
Potter pivoted to face her, and Draco did the same thing. Woolwine only looked at Potter when she answered, which Draco supposed he understood but which was annoying anyway. “You, sir. The magic you have that’s so much stronger than the magic of other werewolf leaders.”  
  
Potter exhaled in annoyance. “But you lot understand how it works. All they would have to do is send in a spy, say another werewolf they’ve tamed and kept dependent on them by the use of Wolfsbane. Not a negotiator. Or they could find the answer by searching in books. They’ve made this a lot more mysterious than it actually is.”  
  
“Did you know about a pack leader’s ability to soothe someone or drive them into exile before you became a werewolf?” Draco had to ask.  
  
Potter glanced at him, frowning. “Well, no. But I felt the power of the first leader I encountered after that, and then when I had questions, they explained things to me.”  
  
“But you can’t ask a werewolf pack,” Draco murmured, mouth heavy with what felt like poisoned honey. “They might lie. They might not know. They’re non-human, you know, there’s no way to trust them or control them. And for one night of the month, they’re little more than mindless beasts. Of course it would be better if you sent a human that you controlled to investigate, and report back to you on what might be exciting new magic.”  
  
Potter looked at him with bitter wonder. “You think that that’s it? As simple as that? They couldn’t trust us, so they sent you?”  
  
“Maybe,” said Draco. “But it seems stupid of them to disbelieve the reports that I made, which were consistent with the ones that werewolves would have given them. Could anyone  _be_ that stupid?”  
  
Woolwine broke in, maybe impatient with having a conversation be between her pack leader and the “traitor” who had harmed them. “Are those the only people who plotted against us?”  
  
“No,” said Potter slowly, although he didn’t take his eyes from Draco. “There was also the name of Dolores Umbridge.”  
  
For a moment, a mild earthquake seemed to shake the ground, and Draco put his hands down to brace himself. Then he realized it was the concerted growls of a werewolf pack, even the mild-looking Lisa. Their eyes and teeth flashed and made them look less than human. Draco reminded himself of the artifacts he carried; shamefully, that was the only thing that let him sit still instead of flee.  
  
Potter didn’t join in the growling. He nodded. “You’ve had experience with her?”  
  
“She was the reason I came here!”  
  
“She told me that I couldn’t have a wand during the war, when I was still a Muggleborn.”  
  
“She said that werewolves should all be exterminated!”  
  
Draco blinked a little, as his vision of their potential field of action widened. He had thought it would be him and Potter acting essentially alone, because of Umbridge’s personal grudge against both of them and theirs against her, but it seemed they would have all the support they wanted if they chose to claim it.  _How interesting._  
  
Potter looked from face to face, maybe estimating their sincerity, or smelling it out, from the way his nostrils fluttered. Draco was content enough to leave them to it. He knew no one except the malcontents.  
  
Then Potter nodded and said, “All right. Kristen, June, Oswald, I want you to be in charge of preparing the Forest against an attack. We think it might be coming, now that Unspeakable Malfoy has decided to stay with us instead of return to his kind.” Draco prepared a brittle smile against the stares that turned on him, wishing he had  _known_ Potter was going to say that. “Sarah, I want you to work with Unspeakable Malfoy on this artifact he’s prepared that might help protect our territory.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” said Woolwine, and she looked as sleek and satisfied as though she’d devoured a deer.  
  
“If she works with me, what are  _you_ going to be doing?” Draco demanded, and ignored the growls that his demand attracted. He had thought he and Potter would work together to try and investigate the Ministry. If that was going to be put off, he bloody well deserved to know why, and what was going to happen next.  
  
“I?” Potter’s smile had a peculiar edge to it. “I’m going to be exploiting my fame.”  
  
Draco thought he knew what that meant. There were people in the Ministry who had cried out it was unfair and unjust when Potter was infected and then regulated under the same procedures that were supposed to confine other werewolves. Potter probably still had friends in the Ministry, if he looked for them—people who would come flocking to his aid and his side because of who he was, if not what.  
  
“I don’t think so,” said Draco. “Not alone. I’m willing to demonstrate my artifact to your followers so they understand it and don’t get their minds snared in it, but this is my fight as much as yours.”  
  
“I wasn’t thinking of going directly to the Ministry,” said Potter, and frowned at Draco. “I was thinking of contacting people there. I can do that as well as the two of us combined can.”  
  
“You weren’t thinking of going? Really?” Draco cocked his head. “Because I was.”  
  
The plan hadn’t been solid until then, but it  _had_  been brewing in the back of his mind, ever since Paracelsus had cried that last name as he ran through the Forest. Namely, that they couldn’t really trust an obsessed vampire who had done what he had done only for Potter’s blood, and then betrayed whatever word he had given Potter the minute he sank his fangs into that blood.  
  
Draco wanted to see for himself. And there was at least one opening he had that Potter didn’t: he had, the last the Unspeakables knew, been a human in good standing, unlike Potter, whose lycanthropy was well-known.  
  
“I don’t think you should go into danger, sir,” said Woolwine, and gave Potter a meaningful stare that Potter returned.  
  
“It wouldn’t be dangerous,” said Draco. “Not if we did it once, and soon, and under controlled conditions.”  
  
“I know what Unspeakables consider  _controlled_ conditions,” said Woolwine, and her voice was cracked through with bitterness. “There’s not much you could do that’s more dangerous. Sir.” She turned and faced Potter. “I gave you my loyalty because I thought you could do great things with it. Don’t devalue my sacrifice by going into the middle of danger that you don’t need to go into the middle of.”  
  
“Only on the ground can we be absolutely sure of things,” said Draco. “Maybe there’s more to this than we know. Maybe Umbridge isn’t involved after all.” He didn’t actually think that was likely, as it would be a random name for the vampire to bring up, but then again, Paracelsus had struck him as a random creature, and a treacherous one. “We need to go there and see for ourselves. It’s the only way to be  _sure_.”  
  
Potter’s face was distant, shadowed, pale. Draco wondered abruptly how much of that came from blood loss rather than lack of confidence. Potter hadn’t taken time to eat or rest before he convened the pack.  
  
“All right,” he said abruptly. “One short mission, tonight, to investigate.” He looked at Draco, and his face had gone cool again. “ _Whatever_ the results, we return tonight. And we use the knowledge we may have gained to face the Unspeakables when they come. Agreed?”  
  
“I don’t like that you’re putting yourself in danger, sir.” Woolwine folded her arms. “That’s my considered opinion.”  
  
“I do consider it,” said Potter. “And thank you. But I think Unspeakable Malfoy is probably right.”  
  
 _He could find some other title to call me, when he knows that I’ve rejected the one I was using._ But Draco knew that a title of some sort was necessary to command respect from the pack, so he said nothing—for the moment.  
  
“Isn’t it rather mad to go into the heart of a Ministry that wants at least one of you out of the way?” One of the women Potter had commanded to defend the pack lifted her head, calm as a wolf. “They might not care to kill you now, but they could catch you and kill you there, and say that they were defending the Ministry from the attack of a bloodthirsty beast.”  
  
“That will only happen if he’s caught,” said Draco.  
  
He received a glare as cold as any that might have come from a fellow Unspeakable. “Hence why I  _specified_ ,” said the woman, each word almost a separate sentence.  
  
Draco would have interjected something, but Potter did it first. “I think what Unspeakable Malfoy means is that he can keep me safe,” he said, and faced Draco. “Can’t you?”  
  
Draco grimaced. He would have enjoyed the confrontational air Potter wore better if they were alone. Someone might get overenthusiastic, thinking they had Potter’s backing for an attack, this way.  
  
But he had never been one to back down from a challenge, and especially not a challenge from Potter. He lifted his head back, trying to mimic the self-assurance of the woman who had questioned him. “I can. Or I wouldn’t have promised it in the first place.”  
  
Grunts and growls from around him said what Potter’s people thought of that, but Potter cut them all off by saying, “Good. Then we’ll go.” He stepped out from the center of the circle and moved to the edge of the clearing, to speak with the woman who had questioned Draco, and two others, presumably the ones who were taking care of the defense while he was gone.  
  
Woolwine leaned in to Draco, her smile pleasant if you were blind to nuance. “Just remember that we  _know_ who left with our leader,” she murmured. “And remember how unpleasant we can make your life, if we want to.”  
  
“I’m not trying to hide from you,” said Draco. “There’s danger to this for me, too. I would never have volunteered if I didn’t think that I could keep us safe.” Irritated, he struck back. “And weren’t you the one who would have liked to see Potter deposed just a little while ago?”  
  
“You understand nothing of what it means to a werewolf, to belong to a proper pack,” said Woolwine, eyes fixed back on Potter. “And now I do.” She flicked a corner of an eyelid and the corner of a lip at Draco, so he could see the edges of her teeth. “So don’t muck it up.”  
  
Draco would have liked to retort, but Potter had turned around from his conversation and was clearly waiting for him. So Draco did nothing more than flick an eyelid back in return, thinking that concealing his contempt from Woolwine for now might actually make it more devastating when he did reveal it, and stood and walked over to Potter.  
  
Potter jerked his head at him and began to jog into the woods. Draco went with him, stifling the impulse to snarl. He wasn’t a werewolf, which they kept reminding him of. Why did he need to be commanded and ordered around like one?  
  
But Potter turned around when they were a distance away into the woods that even werewolf senses must not be able to penetrate—well, he would know—and gave Draco an intent, serious glance. “I trust you. I don’t want my people to take vengeance on you. But I haven’t been back to the Ministry since I was bitten. So I’ll have to rely on you to lead things.”  
  
“If you said that you trust me, why should that be a problem?”  
  
Maybe more of the roughness came through his voice, or his scent, than he wanted to admit to feeling. Potter’s face subtly changed, and he reached up and tightened his hand on Draco’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for the reception of my pack. It’s the way things are when a lot of them have fully accepted me as leader. And the Ministry hardly has the best record when dealing with werewolves.”  
  
Draco wanted to say that he wasn’t part of the Ministry anymore, but, of course, he had been until very recently. He struggled once more, and then nodded. “All right. So what you want me to know is that I’m the leader.” That sounded strange. Draco couldn’t remember being the leader of anything since his position in Slytherin House had collapsed in the wake of the war.  
  
“Yes. I’ll help when I can, but that probably won’t be very often.”  
  
Potter’s eyes fixed, gleaming, on him. Draco told himself that this was  _not_ a greater responsibility than any he’d had in years, and if his legs were so foolish as to tremble, then he would find a way of traveling without them.  
  
He sucked in a deep breath to prepare himself and nodded instead. “All right. So. We’ll leave the Forest via Hogsmeade…”


	18. Take the Lead

“Stay beside me, and keep your head bowed,” Draco told Potter, while he stepped back so that he could see him fully.  
  
Potter said nothing, but simply crouched there with his head bowed. Draco had draped him with one of the light chains that he had brought with him from the Department. It went around Potter’s neck and shoulders, dangling down to a single point on both chest and back, like a shawl. But it was made of golden beads that sang softly with magic, and by touching a particular pair of them, Draco could create a powerful glamour.  
  
The glamour couldn’t hide the fact that Potter was a werewolf; it hadn’t been made to conceal the glow in his eyes or the strength of his muscles and arms. On the other hand, Draco was rather glad of that. They  _wanted_ to show off the werewolf that Draco was bringing into the Department of Mysteries. The supposed traitor to Potter’s pack was going to be the justification for Draco’s return.  
  
He had thought of sneaking in, but in the end, the same scruples prevailed that had made him decide to base the maze in the crystal cube on the Forbidden Forest. He could not be sure that Invisible Heldeson and whoever was on her side in this wouldn’t have artifacts that could reveal any of his disguises. If he’d had more recent access to his own workspace, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but he was limited to the artifacts he had brought with him originally.  
  
And surely they must suspect that his loyalty was wavering now.  
  
“All right, you can stand up now,” Draco said, and Potter rose to his feet, a brown-eyed werewolf. Draco snapped out the chain and collar they had agreed on, and stepped up to Potter.  
  
Who, unexpectedly, let his lip curl back from his teeth, and growled softly.  
  
“You know we have to do this,” Draco said, not moving. He didn’t think this was Potter’s problem, precisely. It came from the instincts of a savage creature that didn’t want to be caged. Draco could agree with that, could appreciate the instincts, but had to tame them anyway. He met Potter stare for stare. “And why.”  
  
Potter visibly battled himself for a second, then jerked his head down and looked away. Draco was gentle when he clipped the chain to the collar, and made sure not to pull on it as they began to walk in the direction of the Forest’s Apparition point.  
  
“I know you don’t like this,” Draco said, in the same calm, running tone he would use to talk to a thestral he had to approach. “But we’ll get revenge in the end that’s much more satisfying than running into the Ministry and tearing someone’s head off.”  
  
“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m an animal, Malfoy.”  
  
Draco started. He had to admit that he  _had_ rather forgotten there was an intelligent being who could respond at the end of the lead.  
  
He would do well to remember. Underestimating werewolves and thinking they were always mindless had cost the Ministry a lot where Potter was concerned, not least in the inefficiency of competing agendas when it came to Draco’s selection as a diplomat.  
  
“I promise that we’ll get the revenge,” he corrected himself smoothly. “And I wouldn’t be talking about revenge to an animal, would I?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Potter was silent then, dropping behind him almost to the end of the lead and walking with his head bowed submissively. Draco tensed a little. He had to admit this was the part of the charade he was most nervous about. He didn’t know if Potter could convincingly play the part of a subdued werewolf instead of a pack leader.  
  
But Potter had insisted he could, and Draco trusted in his own artifacts and skills. So they would take the risk.  
  
*  
  
The Ministry smelled like stone. The Department of Mysteries smelled like death.  
  
Harry walked with his eyes on the floor and his nose working. It actually wasn’t as hard as he’d thought it be, even after years of looking whoever he wanted in the eye. The looks of disgust on most people’s faces weren’t ones he cared to peer too closely at.  
  
And his nose could tell him a lot. He hadn’t been in the Department of Mysteries often when he was an Auror, usually only when an Unspeakable or one of their artifacts was somehow involved in a crime. Then, the shifting rooms and the memories of Sirius’s death had made him so uncomfortable that he didn’t notice much about it.  
  
Now, he saw much more. Or sensed, really. A werewolf’s sense of smell revealed something powerful and rotting under it all. When the rooms spun around them and they stepped through a door that should have led into an eastward room only to find that it was the one they’d already left, Harry’s nostrils quivered with a sudden upsurge of the rotting smell. There were tendons down there, or something like them, pieces of carrion that spun and strained in the right direction. Subtle illusions on the walls had to be responsible for making the human eye think that they were in a completely different place or one they’d left, not reality.  
  
It was interesting. Harry stored the information in the back of his mind, although he didn’t know if he’d ever get the chance to use it.  
  
“Unspeakable Malfoy.”  
  
Malfoy bowed from the waist, precisely enough and with enough real feeling that Harry was tempted to growl again. But he reckoned that wouldn’t get him anywhere, and so he studied the woman in silence instead. This must be Invisible Heldeson. Harry thought that only from Malfoy’s reaction to her, though. He knew nothing about Unspeakable robes or ranks.  
  
Malfoy, though, confirmed a second later who she was. “Invisible,” he said softly, his eyes on the floor as if he was playing Harry’s pretense along with him. “I brought a werewolf who was willing to turn traitor on Potter with me.”  
  
Invisible Heldeson took a crystal from her belt and held it up in front of her. It was shaped like a diamond, with a single hole in the center for an eye to look through. Harry tried not to react, although his heart was pounding hard and crazily. He reckoned that Malfoy must have thought ahead. That would be why an artifact and not an ordinary glamour gave Harry the appearance of someone else.  
  
Whatever the Invisible saw, she either accepted it or didn’t see the necessity of drawing attention to it. She turned to Malfoy with a small, regal nod. “Then you think you are near to solving the mystery of Potter’s unusual power?”  
  
 _It’s not a mystery,_ Harry thought in exasperation.  _We’ve only ever told you fuckers the truth, not that you want to acknowledge it._  
  
“I think a werewolf could explain it better than I could,” Malfoy said, with another bow. “Someone who has run with the power, felt it in his blood and bone…”  
  
 _Oh, so you haven’t told them that you have?_ Harry had to clench his teeth to keep his tongue from lolling out in laughter, a gesture that had become natural over the past few years.  _Naughty Malfoy._  
  
“That’s true,” said Heldeson. “What did he promise you?” These words were addressed to Harry, with her bending down as if she was granting him a great favor by looking him in the eye.  
  
Harry glanced away, hard though it was to muster that particular instinct when he had been a leader for so long. “He promised that I would be free,” he whispered.  
  
“Of what?”  
  
“That power,” said Harry, and shivered. “It’s like slavery. He doesn’t obey any of the  _rules_ that would make it okay for him to use it. He—”  
  
“We should continue this discussion in my office,” interrupted Heldeson, putting out one hand and letting it hover in the air above Harry’s head as if that would cut him off. It did, but only because Harry let it. He bowed his head further and hoped that would be enough to conceal the showing of teeth that had happened before he could stop it. What sort of people did this woman command, that she thought a simple gesture was enough to tame a werewolf?  
  
Then he thought it through, and grimaced.  _People like Malfoy was when he first came to us. People so cowed that they will do whatever she tells them._  
  
“I agree, Invisible,” said Malfoy, in that uninflected voice Harry had hated when he first heard it, and they walked down the corridor. Harry kept his head bowed because he had to, but he sniffed a little, and let the delicate traces of Malfoy’s scent, and his powerful ears, tell him whether Malfoy was afraid.  
  
Not exactly, he decided after a moment. Malfoy’s heart was beating faster than normal, but he walked with solid, heavy steps, and his scent was only a little thorny.  
  
 _Don’t turn back into the mindless slave that I’m only pretending to be,_ Harry mentally snapped at Malfoy.  _You mustn’t. You can’t. I command you not to._  
  
*  
  
Being back in the Department of Mysteries was harder than Draco had thought it would be.  
  
Granted, he was virtually sure that Heldeson hadn’t seen through Potter’s disguise even with her seeing-eye gem. She would have commanded other people to fall on them if she had. Confronting obvious intruders in her office alone wasn’t her style.  
  
But he could feel the shape of the corridors, the very air, bending itself around him. He could feel the intangible urging to yield, the desire to bow his head and give in because Invisible Heldeson knew best and she would find some place for him, some plan for him. He shuddered.  
  
“Are you all right, Unspeakable Malfoy?”  
  
It was Minister Hinsley, coming up on the other side of him. Draco stared dully at him—he thought that would only benefit his position, no matter what happened—and then he nodded jerkily. “I am. It’s only that I took a few wounds in a struggle with Potter, and I’m worried about whether I’ll be infected or not.”  
  
He and Potter had discussed that lie, about whether to use it or not, but he was astonished at the way it came to his lips. So easy, as if he wasn’t affected by the memories around him at all.  
  
Maybe he wasn’t, or less than he’d thought. Draco wouldn’t let his spine straighten or his head lift in too proud a way, because that  _would_ betray the game, but he was now confident that he could make the decisions he needed to make when he needed to make them.  
  
“They suspect you, then?”  
  
“Not the whole pack,” said Draco, and bowed his head further. “Potter told me to get out and not come back. But that was before this particular werewolf came to me and said that he didn’t like his leader’s magic.” He jerked his head at Potter, who cringed and snarled.  
  
Draco silently applauded. He had thought Potter couldn’t pull off that act so convincingly, especially once he had spent some years enjoying himself at the head of a werewolf pack.   
  
But he’d been wrong, and Draco was glad to be so. This was the crawling semblance of a defeated and battered  _creature._ Nothing like the graceful and strong-eyed Potter Draco had grown used to.  
  
 _And if I don’t think that again, I will be pleased._  
  
“How deep are the wounds?” Invisible Heldeson was asking it as if she had forgotten that she had wanted them go to her office. “Can they be monitored? We have a unique chance here to study the progress of the disease through the perspective of a trained mind.”  
  
Draco flinched a little. That was all right, too, though. They probably would expect him to be disgusted and horrified by their treating him like a study project.  
  
“They’re not deep, Invisible,” he whispered, avoiding her eyes. “Should—should we talk about them in public?” He reached for his sleeve as though he was willing to pull it back and show them the wounds if they wanted to see them.  
  
“Privacy would be a nice asset,” said the Minister, coming oddly to his rescue. “Come, Unspeakable Malfoy.” He glanced at Potter with a greed in his eyes that Draco understood only after a moment of thinking. He probably thought this was a way to get revenge on at least _one_ werewolf. “And what is this one’s name?”  
  
“Ian Jackson,” Draco said. That had been arranged, too. Potter had told him that Jackson was a werewolf who had spent time in his pack last year, but had left amicably when it became clear that he didn’t respond well to Potter’s magic. The chances of the Ministry knowing the details of Jackson’s movements were small.  
  
“Very well,” said the Minister. “Yes, we should be in private for what we mean to discuss.” Once again, he and Invisible Heldeson exchanged significant glances.  
  
 _I do wonder what you will say,_ Draco thought to himself, and gathered up Potter’s lead. He would have to do some of the talking in the office, to distract from what Potter was doing.  
  
He doubted that would be a problem. Heldeson and Hinsley thought, at least, that he was still loyal enough they would question him. Draco could bear the questions, even a bombardment of them. He would do as he had to do.  
  
 _For revenge._  
  
*  
  
Harry had begun sniffing, in a way that would make it look as though he was wrinkling his nose or snarling from the side, almost the moment they met the Minister and the Invisible.  
  
And what he could tell Malfoy—well, could have told him, if they could speak freely to each other—was that both of them had spiking heartbeats and scents mixing into their sweat as it came out their pores. They bristled with emotions. Harry couldn’t always track one scent to one emotion; that was much easier with people he knew or had at least spent some time around. But he did know what the combination of those scents plus their heartbeats meant.  
  
 _They’re frightened._  
  
They hadn’t expected to see Malfoy here again, and probably not at all with a captive werewolf. They were wary, interested to see what they could get out of this affair, and probably interested in his reports. But they were frightened, too.  
  
 _Why, I wonder? Just of my power? Of what they would find out? Or what someone else would find out about_ them,  _and the fucked-up way they sent Malfoy to “negotiate” with me?_  
  
Harry was willing to wager it was the last one, although he would have liked more time to be sure.  
  
They were in the Invisible’s office, which seemed to be a mass of crystal and silver artifacts. Harry felt their magic touch him and tingle, but no alarm blared, and he decided to ignore them. He had destroyed one office full of silver instruments before, when he was only fifteen years old. He could do it again if he had to.  
  
When Malfoy pushed him to sit at his feet instead of in a chair, Harry wanted to rebel. They hadn’t agreed on this part of the charade, and it would be harder for him to watch faces from a position on the floor.  
  
But the minute he sat down beside the chair, he understood. This way, he was closer to the swirling scents that tracked through the air near the floor. He could watch the shuffling motions of arms and legs that might be less guarded than faces. And if he had to, he could look up at them without them noticing.  
  
“Unspeakable Malfoy,” Invisible Heldeson said. From the sound of the slight rasp of papery skin, she was linking her fingers together. “Do you have any idea why we sent you to negotiate with Potter?”  
  
“I thought I did,” Malfoy said, in an unsteady voice. “I thought it was what you told me.”  
  
“The situation is more complicated than we originally thought,” said Heldeson. Harry heard her shifting around in her chair, too, and a second later, a new emotion began to bleed slowly through her scent. He breathed in and moved his head in a little nod, the only form of communication with Malfoy he could risk right now. Malfoy seemed to notice, if the sudden tight grip of his hand on the lead was any indication.  
  
“More complicated? But how could that be about a decision that you made in the past?”   
  
Harry relaxed. Yes, he thought Malfoy would keep them baffled. He sounded innocently puzzled, maybe a little frightened. Harry found it hard to keep the emotions he was projecting in mind when his scent so clearly said something else. He had a passing thought that the Department of Mysteries should really hire werewolves, and then told himself sternly not to think of that until they were out of the Ministry.  
  
“There is someone else who happened to make part of the decision,” said Heldeson, “and is responsible for your—message not reaching us when it should.” She turned her head to a door on the opposite side of the room. Harry had noted it, but other than making out more of the rotting smell behind it, he hadn’t paid much attention. There didn’t seem to be a point.  
  
Now, it opened. Now a giggling, girlish voice said, “I hope Mr. Malfoy can forgive me. I hope we’re all friends here!”  
  
Malfoy’s hand on the lead grew brutal. Harry leaned against his legs, in silent reassurance that he wasn’t about to leap up and attack Umbridge.  
  
Now, he just had to hope the same was true of Malfoy.


	19. Restrain the Hunter

“It’s  _such_ a pleasure and honor to know that you lived up to my choice,” Umbridge was gushing, one hand pressed to her heart as she stood on the other side of Invisible Heldeson’s desk and watched Malfoy. “To know that in spite of some of the regrettable things you did during the war, your heart was always in the right place.”  
  
Malfoy was wild with hatred, but Harry thought no one without a werewolf’s nose would ever know that. Of course, it remained to be seen if Umbridge had acquired some strange powers in the years since Harry had last known her. But Malfoy sat still in the chair, and the bow he gave Umbridge was perfection itself.  
  
As was the tight hold he maintained on Harry’s collar. Harry had hated the collar and lead from the moment Malfoy first proposed them, but he could see the necessity now.  
  
“Thank you for your trust, Madam Undersecretary,” Malfoy murmured.  
  
“Oh, my dear, I don’t hold such an  _exalted_ position now!” Umbridge winked at him as though Malfoy had been flirting with her. Harry was also glad that Malfoy’s hold on his neck was probably too tight for Harry to bow his head and vomit, even if he  _did_ want to. “You should know that! I’m here in an—unofficial capacity.”  
  
“Did you select me as negotiator in the same capacity, madam?” Malfoy seemed determined to use titles all over instead of Umbridge’s name. Harry considered that for a while before he could see the sense of it. Of course, Umbridge’s name might show Malfoy’s contempt too clearly.  
  
“Yes,” said Umbridge. “Oh, not without the cooperation of the dear Minister and dear Invisible Heldeson, of course.” She turned and simpered at Minister Hinsley. “We found that our interests were rather  _similar_ , and the Minister was kind enough to let me help with the choice of the negotiator.”  
  
The Minister avoided her eyes, Harry noticed. He had to glance back down at the floor before Hinsley noticed him looking, but he was sure that he hadn’t missed the twitch of revulsion in the Minister’s fingers when he said, “Yes, but I want Thornsberry without sanctuary. Nothing akin to what you want, madam.”  
  
“We can both get what we want, then.” Umbridge appeared utterly undismayed at the dismissal, and Harry hoped she would turn and simper at Invisible Heldeson next, so they could learn why she had betrayed one of her own people. But instead, she turned and approached Harry. “And what kind of dear little doggie have you brought to see me?”  
  
Malfoy’s hand on his collar was so firm that Harry knew he wasn’t even to growl. Of course, he would have to be more suicidal than he thought he was to do that. He bowed his head, and allowed Umbridge to gather up his chin and manipulate his head back and forth without protest, letting it hang down again when she released it.  
  
“His name is Ian Jackson,” said Malfoy, his voice clear and critical. “He does have a tendency to whimper a bit, but he wanted to be free of the slavery of serving Harry Potter, and he agreed to a collar now for greater freedom later.”  
  
“A werewolf who understands an exchange!” Umbridge clasped her hands together. This close, Harry could smell her better than he’d smelled anyone who wasn’t of the pack in months—well, except Malfoy. She had a perfume that floated around her body and seemed especially located in the creases of her neck, but beneath that, there was a thick scent that reminded Harry of—  
  
He nearly stiffened and snarled as he recognized it, but in this case, the heavy collar was a relief, reminding Harry of where they were. Umbridge was already moving away, anyway, and talking some nonsense about non-humans and how nice it was when the Ministry could reach an accommodation with them. Harry let himself slump, his weight resting on his elbows and his legs trembling as he knelt there.  
  
Malfoy’s hand on his head was heavy, comprehensive. He tugged at Harry’s hair, and Harry looked up, to find Invisible Heldeson studying him.  
  
“I know that you mean what you say, Unspeakable Malfoy, and you are a trained investigator,” she said. “But are you sure that Potter will not come after us before we can attack him, angered that we took in this traitor to the pack?”  
  
“Yes,” said Malfoy, and shifted his weight in his chair. His heartbeat had calmed down again, and now Harry knew some werewolves who could have been in the room and still been fooled by him. Sometimes, his Unspeakable-trained self-control came in valuable. “Potter’s besetting fault is arrogance. He thinks he has power that can command humans. He thinks that every werewolf who feels it must want to crawl at his feet and submit to him. He’ll never look for rebellion because he thinks it isn’t possible.”  
  
They had come up with the general outlines of that story, but not the words that Malfoy put around it, the flesh that clothed its bones. Harry knew he had to refrain from closing his eyes in pride, but he came pretty near to doing it anyway.  
  
“And what is the power?” Minister Hinsley was pressing, now. “Could he use it to control Thornsberry, the way he claimed he could?”  
  
“Of course not, Minister,” said Malfoy. His hand touched Harry’s head again. “Look, he can’t even control a weaker werewolf who was determined to break free of him, let alone one as powerful as Fenrir Greyback’s Scion.”  
  
“I thought not,” said Hinsley, with a bob of his head. “But in that case, why volunteer to take Thornsberry? His pack stands a danger of being torn apart.” He gave Harry a speculative glance where he was on the floor. “The way it’s already being shredded.”  
  
“Because of that same arrogance,” said Malfoy. “He wanted to set himself up as a greater alpha than Fenrir Greyback, with a better claim to being Lord of Werewolves.”  
  
 _To being what?_ They actually hadn’t planned for this particular direction the interrogation could take—there was only so far they could plan—but it was hard for Harry to keep himself from sitting up and staring from face to face. Did the Ministry really believe there was one werewolf who controlled all the packs? To Harry, that made no more sense than to have one king who controlled all countries.  
  
But they seemed to accept Malfoy’s lie well enough. Invisible Heldeson was the one who gestured to Harry. “Can he show us the way this power works? Will he perform for us?” She discussed Harry as if he wasn’t there and perfectly well able to decide for himself.  
  
 _That’s the way she thinks of all werewolves. I have to remember that it’s an advantage, in the end._ Harry kept his hands neatly folded on the floor, fingers tucked under as if he didn’t want to reach out and scrape her face off.   
  
“Not as well as if we had Potter here,” said Malfoy. “I did think about trying to coax him to come, but I didn’t want to take the risk.”  
  
 _Apparently you like lying to your enemies, though._ Harry would remember that. He glanced at Umbridge, and found her eyes fixed on him. He let his gaze fall again. He knew Umbridge wasn’t a vampire or a werewolf or any other creature that could discover what he was merely by scent. It would be dangerous to relax too much around her, though.  
  
“But you can demonstrate?”  
  
Invisible Heldeson had focused on the loophole that Malfoy had left open in the words, of course. Malfoy nodded and reached out, scratching behind Harry’s ears as if he really was a dog. “Show the way that you reacted when Potter used the power on you, Jackson,” he muttered. “Come on.”  
  
Harry rose slowly and clumsily to his feet, as though he really belonged on all fours. For a second, he looked at their faces, but ended up dipping his head again. That was part of the charade, but it was also easier to look away from all that concentrated—hatred was too grand a word for it. They wanted him to perform, but they thought of him as a toy, not an intelligent creature.  
  
“This is the way it is for lots of people in the pack when they’re confronted with Potter’s power,” he said, and cleared his throat.  
  
“ _People_ ,” Umbridge giggled to Minister Hinsley.  
  
Harry was just as glad, now, that none of them were familiar with werewolves, which meant they didn’t know what one’s danger signals looked like. He lifted his head and stared at an invisible target over Invisible Heldeson’s shoulder.  
  
“I’ll be looking at him, like this,” he whispered. “And then I’ll fall down, like this. It’s a compulsion. I can’t  _help_ myself.”  
  
He dropped straight down, his belly pressed to the floor, and whined and yelped and growled. The noises were easier to make when he thought of having Umbridge’s throat in his teeth.  
  
“But why did the power affect Unspeakable Malfoy?” Heldeson asked, after they had watched Harry’s display for a little while. “If it can only affect werewolves?”  
  
“That had to do with the Killing Curse Harry Potter survived,” said Malfoy, once again deploying a lie they had worked out. “You were right, Invisible. Potter isn’t an ordinary pack leader. He was able to call on a form of magic that werewolf packs haven’t used in a long time, because there’s been no pack leader powerful enough to use it.”  
  
Invisible Heldeson gave the first real smile Harry had seen her use, a faint thin one that looked as if her mouth would hurt if she tried anything broader.  _It’s no wonder that Malfoy felt like he was competing just to get a scrap of praise._  
  
“What about the Killing Curse?” Minister Hinsley said, and leaned forwards as if he would warm his hands over the fire of Harry’s disgrace. “What does that mean?”  
  
“Jackson can explain it better than I can. He’s lived with it longer.”  
  
 _Thanks a bloody lot, Malfoy._ But it was true that both of them had been party to the lie, and if Malfoy had strengthened it with magical theory, Harry had been able to come up with “unusual” things he did that would strengthen the claim that it was strange for a pack leader to develop such power.  
  
“Did you know,” Harry began, still in a whisper, “that the Killing Curse really killed the mortal part of Harry Potter?”  
  
“The mortal part?” Umbridge, for the first time since she had come into the room, wasn’t smiling. “What do you mean by that?”  
  
“Why, madam,” said Harry, and turned his head to fix her with wide eyes. He used the excuse to sniff again. Yes, he wasn’t wrong about the scent covering her. He just had to decide what he was going to do about it. “I thought you knew. As close an association as you had with Harry Potter, you know. You taught him.”  
  
“Well, yes, hem, hem.” Umbridge shook her head sadly. “I haven’t met him for years. The rift between us grew too big to be mended.”  
  
Harry lowered his voice dramatically, and he thought that no one looking on from the outside would hear him. “Harry Potter isn’t a mortal body with a soul inside it. Harry Potter is just a naked soul walking around.”  
  
There was silence. Invisible Heldeson sat with her hands pressed to her mouth, as if she had no idea what to say over that revelation. The Minister was frowning heavily. Umbridge was the one Harry watched, though, the one whose reaction he wanted.  
  
Well, that and the one whose scent covered her. That particular reaction would have been nice to have. But Harry would have to wait and hope for that one.  
  
“That’s ridiculous,” Umbridge said at last, and her voice was a loud bray. “Someone—someone would have reported that before that now. There are people who  _touched_ him in the last few years and found him solid!”  
  
“Before his bite?” Harry writhed his head around to the side inquiringly, and whined a little when Umbridge looked at him, as though making an attempt to pacify her. Malfoy’s hand tightened on his collar for a second. Harry knew what that meant:  _don’t overdo it_.  
  
But it would be hard to overdo it with these people. Their misconceptions about werewolves made them vulnerable to all sorts of tricks. They expected werewolves to be cowardly and cringing, non-human and vicious all at the same time. All Harry was doing was giving them what they wanted.  
  
“Yes, of course before his bite,” said Umbridge, and waved her hand. “How many of them do you think have seen them since he ran away?”  
  
 _I will remember you said that,_  Harry thought distinctly, but he didn’t need Malfoy to restrain him now. He would get his revenge on Umbridge, but for right now, the most important thing to do was confirm their suspicions and then get out again. Actual revenge could wait for later, and the right moment to take advantage of it.  
  
“You know best, madam,” said Harry softly, and bowed his head. “But th—the Killing Curse  _did_ something to him. Unspeakable Malfoy is the one who can tell you the magical theory.” He looked up at Malfoy with an adoration that he made dog-like, because that was what they would expect to see. “He’s the one who explained it all to me.”  
  
“In a way, Harry Potter does still have his physical body.” Malfoy gracefully took up the challenge. “But the second death he suffered, when the Dark Lord cast the Killing Curse at him in the Forbidden Forest, stripped away the outer covering of mortality over his magical core. Did you notice that his magic had unusual power after his supposed death and coming back to life?”  
  
Harry dipped his head towards the floor and let his tongue loll. The Battle of Hogwarts had taken on near-mythic proportions in the Ministry, he knew. He hadn’t been sure it had in the Department of Mysteries, but Malfoy had been able to assure him it had. The Unspeakables thought that the way Harry had succumbed to the Killing Curse that second time, and then come back to life, was intriguing, and they would have loved to get their hands on him and study him.  
  
So it made sense now for Minister Hinsley to say, “I—heard that, but I didn’t fully credit the reports.”  
  
“Neither did I, but I should have,” said Invisible Heldeson, and her hands twisted over each other. “So more of Potter’s magical core projects into the world, does it? That would explain how he could influence even humans with the power that normally only holds sway over werewolves, and why his spells have so much power behind them.”  
  
 _Idiots. Your own hearts do the convincing for you. I’m more determined and braver than a lot of other people, but I’m not more powerful._  
  
Malfoy nodded a little, and spoke as fervently as though he shared Heldeson’s beliefs. “Yes, Invisible. I nearly gave in to his power myself.” Harry knew he was probably conjuring a blush. “If it hadn’t been for Jackson coming to me and telling me what was happening, I probably wouldn’t have broken free—and Jackson only broke free because he managed to get into a distant part of the Forest, far enough away.”  
  
“Then we need to get him here,” said Heldeson. “We  _must_ get him here, Minister, so that we can study his magic.”  
  
She sounded like she was pleading. Harry let his nostrils flare a little, and took in the heavy scent rising off the Minister. It had been heavy from the first moment, but now it was more charged with emotion. Harry waited for the reason why, which he thought the Minister was opening his mouth to speak.  
  
Umbridge interrupted before he could, her voice a shrill squeal. “We must  _get rid of him!_  Not bring him here, where he could infect the Ministry with his madness!”  
  
“You have had your say in this, madam,” said Hinsley, and turned to her with a frown. “You were the one who recommended sending Draco Malfoy, and I must say that your choice proved inspired. Potter’s betrayed himself now, and not as many people will support him. But you must leave the final choice up to us.”  
  
Umbridge’s mouth snapped shut, and her ugly little eyes glinted. Harry doubted Hinsley would find it as easy as he thought to push her out of the way.  
  
“We could keep him safe here,” said Heldeson. “We could ensure that Unspeakable Malfoy drugged him with that new version of Wolfsbane before he brought him in, and that would restrain his power.”  
  
The Minister hesitated. “Ye-es,” he said. “I suppose that would work. It would remove him from control of the pack, and at least that means that no one else there could possibly be interested in adopting Thornbserry.” He turned abruptly to Malfoy. “Did you see anyone there who would be sympathetic to the Ministry? And who you know is opposed to Potter’s policies concerning Thornsberry?”  
  
While Malfoy was busy offering up the name of Sarah Woolwine, Harry let his tongue loll out again. He didn’t think anyone else would recognize it as laughter. They were going to send Malfoy back to capture him, and in the meantime, that left them with a gold-plated excuse to slip out of the Ministry.  
  
His eyes went back to Umbridge, who was fuming as she listened, and his hands didn’t close into fists only because he sternly willed them not to.  
  
He and Malfoy would figure out a way to punish her, too. And he would figure out a way to deal with the fact that she was covered in Paracelsus’s scent.


	20. Walk the Tightrope

“You’re sure?”  
  
Draco knew his voice was sharp, skeptical, but he  _needed_ Potter to be completely sure. Facing Umbridge and the Unspeakables and the Minister himself was bad enough without adding a vampire into the mix unless they had to.  
  
But Potter tapped his nose and stretched and shook his head, as though the collar that Draco had put on his neck was more than a faint weight. “I smelled his scent all over her. I’m sure.”  
  
“I suppose that he’s as obsessed with your blood as ever, then,” Draco murmured, his mind working rapidly. As difficult as it made matters, he should have expected it. Paracelsus’s face when he bit into Potter’s throat was the face of a vampire in rapture, not one who would easily give up what he had found for the sake of a lesser victim.  
  
It made Draco wonder how he could stand to feed on  _Umbridge’s_ blood, but the ways of vampires were difficult to fathom. He glanced at Potter, who was examining his hands ruefully. “What are you doing that for? I didn’t put a lead on your hands.”  
  
Potter cocked his head at him, and then replied, “No, and I understand the reasons you needed to put one around my neck.” Draco flushed a little. It seemed he hadn’t escaped Potter’s nose detecting his slightly offended odor,  _again_. “But I thought I was going to break my fingers, grinding them into the floor like that.”  
  
“No one made you do that, either.”  
  
“Umbridge did. I had to clench them so that they wouldn’t see how claw-like they were turning every time I looked at her.” Unexpectedly, Potter snarled, a flash of teeth that made Draco toss his head back out of the way and gasp. “I  _hate_ the bitch. I’d like to tear her throat out.”  
  
For once, Draco could agree wholeheartedly with a violent declaration a werewolf had made, instead of flinching away and thinking only about what would happen if that beast got out of control and came after  _him_. “I could do the same thing, if I had the right kind of teeth.”  
  
Potter grinned at him. “I knew you were a kindred spirit.” He turned and stepped into the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest’s trees. They had come to the edges here so that they could remove the leash from Potter’s neck and make sure no one was following them before they went to the pack’s territory. “Come on. They’re probably wondering where we were. They probably thought we’d return long before now.”  
  
He settled into a steady lope that reminded Draco of a wolf’s. Draco followed without complaint, though. His mind was on something else.  
  
“You don’t think the plan I recommended to them has any chance of succeeding?” he asked.  
  
“What? That Sarah Woolwine would be the happiest creature in the world to rebel against me?” For a moment, Potter paused with his nose working, sniffing deeply. Draco tried to do the same thing, but all he smelled was damp. “Oh, of course not. We came to an accord. She felt I wasn’t paying enough attention to her, but she doesn’t want the leadership, and she doesn’t want to leave the pack. She just wanted some acknowledgment of her place as an experienced werewolf, and someone who could offer me advice.”  
  
Draco nodded, but absently. His eyes were on a shadow that was pacing them, a shadow that wasn’t wolf-shaped. A second later, Potter took a particularly deep snuff and stopped. Draco supposed he would have smelled it earlier, but the wind hadn’t been blowing in the right direction until then.  
  
“Paracelsus,” said Potter, and his voice rippled in a way that made Draco shiver with something he wasn’t going to identify or name at the moment.  
  
The shadow drifted into the path in front of them. Draco could barely see Paracelsus’s face even when he did, however. His head was sunk between his shoulders, and a desperate little chittering sound emerged from his mouth.  
  
“Paracelsus,” Potter repeated. “What are you doing here? You must know that your life is forfeit on my pack’s land now.” He was bowed forwards as if he was going to launch himself from a standing start at the vampire. Maybe he would. Maybe Draco should arrange to be far away if that happened, and not standing here practically salivating at the thought of it.  
  
Draco didn’t understand himself sometimes.  
  
“I must have it,” said Paracelsus, and one hand came out and groped at the air in front of him. Draco thought of the way a condemned criminal would kneel at the Wizengamot’s feet and pull at their robes. “It burned out the moon for me.”  
  
Draco blinked. He thought he remembered a reference to something like that, but he couldn’t immediately recall where he had read it.  
  
“I can’t grant you the ability to become a werewolf,” said Potter. “I told you that a long time ago.”  
  
 _Did Paracelsus believe Potter could?_ Draco was starting to believe this wasn’t one of the most intellectually shining vampires ever to come forth.  
  
“That is not what it means,” whispered Paracelsus, and there was a raspy sound like him sliding his tongue across lips so dry they could hardly part. “I mean that you have taken the light from me. I cannot see. I cannot  _think_. I must have it.” His hand did pluck at Potter’s robe now, once, twice.  
  
Draco caught his breath. He recognized the reference now. A vampire said that the moon had been burned out for him when he was committed to one host, hooked on the taste of one person’s blood. It was another name for obsession, but it went a step further. Instead of simply attacking the creature whose blood they wanted to drink, the vampire wanted to keep them alive and drink it as long as they could. It could bring a vampire as close to romance as they would ever know.  
  
 _Or abject slavery, maybe,_ Draco decided, looking at the way the vampire knelt in front of Potter, and the disgusted look on Potter’s face.  _And I don’t think he’s going to get much help from_ that  _direction._  
  
“You can get up now,” said Potter.  
  
Paracelsus bowed his head down against the earth, and whimpered, and didn’t move.   
  
Potter turned a look full of utter loathing—at the world in general, Draco thought, not at a specific person—on Draco. “Do  _you_ have any idea of what’s wrong with him?”  
  
“He’s given you a lot of power over him, if you want it,” said Draco. He would be neutral for now. That Potter hadn’t immediately accused Paracelsus of treachery suggested he wanted to use him somehow. Normally, a vampire would be alert enough to that possibility, but Paracelsus was too far gone to be alert for anything except Potter’s neck. “You could command him to move mountains for a taste of your blood.”  
  
“I want him to  _remove_ something,” said Potter.  
  
Draco knew, then, that Potter would command the vampire to assassinate Umbridge. He met Potter’s eyes and mouthed,  _Is this safe?_  
  
Potter gave an angry shrug that Draco thought he interpreted, rightly, as Potter not giving a fuck. He turned sharply to the kneeling vampire. “Will you do as I tell you, if I promise you another taste of my blood at the end?”  
  
Draco watched in foreboding. He thought making a deal with Paracelsus was a bad idea. Yes, the vampire was far gone, but on the other hand, he had been able to break free of the compulsion enough to betray Potter in the first place.  
  
“I will do whatever you want,” Paracelsus said, and knelt there, and gazed up with melting eyes.  
  
Potter met his gaze without fear. Well, when he was the leader of a group of werewolves, he could get away with that, Draco supposed. “I want you to do something simple for me. Something that will benefit me, and you, and most of the population of magical creatures in Britain, I reckon. And it’s so little. Just small.” His voice had become the sort of coaxing, hypnotizing croon that Draco would have expected Paracelsus to use instead of the other way around.  
  
“Yes.” Paracelsus crept closer, still moving on his hands and knees, but in a way that made it seem like it was a centipede scuttling. Draco tucked his hands in his sleeves so that he wouldn’t shudder visibly.  
  
“Assassinate Umbridge for me.”  
  
Paracelsus stopped moving. He stared up at Potter, and shadows moved across his face that had nothing to do with the visible darkness in which he crouched. Draco nodded wisely. He had been right to suspect the depth of the vampire’s obsession. Either he was pretending now, or his plan to punish Potter and claim all his blood still took precedence over his desire for a momentary taste.  
  
“What did you say?” Paracelsus had eased closer. He had perhaps put his hands in the dirt and was balancing his weight on them, but Draco found that difficult to see. He only knew that the vampire was closer, and his fangs were a little more visible, and any friendliness that his voice  _had_ had was gone entirely.  
  
“I said that I wanted you to assassinate Umbridge for me,” said Potter. “You said that she was involved with this. She’s my personal enemy, and I want her gone. That should be enough reason for me to ask.”  
  
Draco wanted to shift his own weight, making sure that he had enough time and room to draw his wand, but he didn’t dare move. Potter and the vampire were staring at each other, still, poised, both of them full of power and playing the game to its inevitable conclusion. He wasn’t about to interfere in that.  
  
“That doesn’t make sense,” Paracelsus murmured, as if he thought he would be able to trick Potter into admitting something that wasn’t true. “That you would need me to bring an enemy of yours down.”  
  
Potter gave him a faint smile. “You think I can do it myself?”  
  
“You have the power to do it if you want,” said Paracelsus, which Draco noticed didn’t exactly mean the same thing. Again, he shifted, and again his nails were digging into dirt, scraping it up softly. “It’s such a strange request. Let me do something else for you. Let me hunt down Ninian and punish him for you. That’s the right thing to do.”  
  
“I challenged Ninian according to pack law,” said Potter. “I won the challenge. He left with his life. There was nothing that would require me to kill him. That’s not the service I want of you. I’ve stated what I want.” He moved his hair to the side and turned his head, so that his veins gleamed in his throat even to Draco’s sight. “Meanwhile. Don’t you want a taste of this?”  
  
Draco gave a little shiver of awe. He would never have thought Potter would take it that far. Paracelsus’s control could break at any moment.  
  
But just as he had already proven that he was more than the desperate vampire Draco had taken him for, Paracelsus balanced, wavering, on his fists for a little longer. “I could get you anything else. The apples of the moon. A crown like the sun.”  
  
“Her death is what I want,” said Potter, and his voice was deep and sweet and serene.  
  
Paracelsus struck.  
  
Draco knew he should stay out of the way and let Potter take him on. He knew that he wasn’t fast enough to stop a vampire, even if he thought it was something he owed to Potter for some strange reason.  
  
Which made it make  _no sense_ when he flung himself forwards and into the vampire’s path instead, trying to take on the burden of defending Potter. But that was what he did.  
  
*  
  
 _Malfoy, you idiot!_  
  
Only part of Harry’s brain was saying that, though. The rest of him was busy lunging and pushing and spinning around with Malfoy in his arms, catching him before he could get himself eaten. Paracelsus had already altered the path of his leap anyway, because Harry knew he didn’t care about Malfoy’s blood.  
  
Harry threw Malfoy to the side, and snarled at him when it seemed as though he might get up and move. Malfoy froze, staring at him in astonishment.  
  
Paracelsus would have struck by now, Harry knew, unless he was deliberately leaving Harry some time to respond, knowing it would fuck with him. Harry turned around again, his hand on his wand.  
  
Paracelsus was clinging to a tree trunk and watching him the way he often had, his head bobbing as if to music. Harry did nothing but look at him. Paracelsus probably suspected now that Harry knew of his treachery.   
  
That meant he could go back to the Ministry and tell Umbridge about it.  
  
And Harry couldn’t let that happen.  
  
 _My bloody temper._  He shouldn’t have let it get the better of him by suggesting that Paracelsus kill Umbridge. Of course that would bring up lots of suspicion, even if Paracelsus didn’t get the suspicion exactly right.  
  
But he couldn’t go backwards, either. He silently drew up power for a spell that should accomplish what he needed it to accomplish, although whether that would mean anything against Paracelsus’s vampire strength was up for debate.  
  
“You are different from any other mortal I have experienced,” said Paracelsus.  
  
He said it like a caress. But those were mortals that he had eaten, Harry reminded himself. He had gone too far in forgiving Paracelsus’s nature, thinking he was useful or amusing, or even someone like Harry, an outcast from the wizarding world because of a condition that world didn’t understand.   
  
Some vampires could be like that, maybe. Paracelsus wasn’t one of them, and had never pretended to be. It was Harry’s fault if he had let that idea overtake him.  
  
“Different,” Paracelsus repeated, as if that would make Harry listen to him all by itself. “Tastier.”  
  
Harry nodded a little. Paracelsus leaped off the tree and blurred at him again. He wanted Harry to see his death coming. There was no other reason to wait that long, not to jump when Harry knew that Paracelsus could have held him down and ripped his throat open with his back turned.  
  
He wanted Harry to see his killer.  
  
“ _Protego dorsum_ ,” Harry said, casting it with power but not exceptional force, so he thought that his voice came out kind of muted.  
  
Paracelsus had immense speed and reflexes and strength, but even he couldn’t stop and change direction in mid-air. He slammed against the shield cage that manifested around him, and screeched in an emotion so shrill that Harry couldn’t tell what it was. His scent had gone dry, all dead ants and blood, the same scent that Harry had smelled clinging to Umbridge.  
  
Paracelsus crashed to the floor of the cage and lay there staring at Harry through the silver. Harry walked carefully around it. The Reverse Shield spell created a round bubble, not a single barrier the way  _Protego_ did, and it went all the way around Paracelsus and hovered at Harry’s chest height off the ground. Harry had learned the spell specifically for protection against enemies who could dig through the dirt and maybe get away if the cage was sitting on the ground.  
  
“Are you happy with yourself?”  
  
Harry completed his circuit and looked up into Paracelsus’s eyes, at the same height as his own with the raising of the cage and the way that Paracelsus had reared up inside it.  
  
“Yes,” he said. “But not as happy as I’m going to be.  _Somnio_.”  
  
Paracelsus shook his head and showed his fangs for a second, but even if a normal wizard couldn’t put him to sleep, he seemed to have forgotten about Harry’s training. He crumpled motionless and curled-up to the floor of the cage a moment later.  
  
Then Harry turned to check on Malfoy, who was lying on the ground and watching him as if that was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.  
  
“Thank you for trying to get between the vampire and me,” said Harry, the words feeling stiff and unfamiliar in his own mouth. “But you don’t need to do that. I’m probably going to do better in situations like that than you can.”  
  
*  
  
It was only the words  _situations like that_ being added that made Draco not bristle.  
  
He nodded and accepted Potter’s hand to his feet, thinking. He had done something stupid, but he could justify it, if he wanted. He was already affected by Potter’s magic. Potter was his best route to get revenge on Umbridge for putting him in these circumstances and probably losing him his job. Potter had to stay alive if Draco was going to see that revenge.  
  
But he thought that was wrong, the way he thought that Potter was wrong about him not having extra strength. Draco had heard of that cage spell, not seen it done before, but he’d heard the Sleep Charm plenty of times, and there was a power singing in the air around him that was impossible to mistake.  
  
So all of those things. Being affected by power, needing Potter, and feeling that Potter had saved and protected  _him_ , even if it was only because Draco had done something stupid in the first place. Draco had noticed that Potter was careful to always keep his body between Draco and the vampire as he fought Paracelsus, even if the fight was short and Paracelsus was mostly focused on him anyway.  
  
“Thank you,” he said.  
  
Potter’s eyes sharpened, but he didn’t ask what Draco meant, which showed they shared a basic understanding. He nodded, and floated the cage behind them as they made their way further into the Forest.  
  
 _We have their spy. We have knowledge of their plans and the territory, which they don’t._  
  
 _We’re going to win this. _  
__


	21. Set the Trap

“I still think that your little trap isn’t going to work.”  
  
Draco smiled smugly at Sarah Woolwine, pulling his hand back so that it was cradled against his side. The crystal cube thrummed and glowed for a moment, hot enough to make Draco wince. But he had endured its version of branding before. This was minor compared to what he had gone through when he established his control over it and bent its maze to his will.  
  
“You have a much more smug look on your face than you used to.” Woolwine cocked her head at him, and then moved a step forwards, nose working as she scented. “What does it come from? Do you think you’ve bested me, because I proved that my mind could be caught in your trap? It would not happen to our leader.”  
  
Draco wanted to laugh and tell her what a change that was from the tune she had been singing when he first came to the Forest, but he had better things to do. He gathered the cube up against him again and shrugged. “Your leader isn’t the one I’m trying to catch.”  
  
After staring at him and sniffing for a moment, Woolwine seemed to accept that. She nodded curtly and turned away. “Then you’ll excuse me while I coordinate the defense of the pack’s territory around—that thing.” She looked at the cube as she spoke, and then away again. “It’s going to take a while.”  
  
She disappeared into the bushes with the same steady lope that Potter practiced, and Draco looked back into the cube, turning it over. He still wondered what his ancestors would say if they knew how he had changed his heritage, but he suspected the far greater crime was abandoning that heritage in the first place—thinking it was something to be ashamed of, and that he could do nothing better than to become a mindless slave.  
  
He owed Potter for rescuing him from that.  
  
Draco scowled and shook his head. He didn’t  _owe_ Potter for that, and he refused to start thinking he did. Yes, Potter had been helpful, and he had seemed interested in making sure that Draco knew  _how_ helpful. But that only meant a debt in the way that Gryffindors thought of it. Potter would want to make sure that Draco kept his part in the bargain they had made, and didn’t betray his pack. He wouldn’t press the debt crushingly down on Draco’s neck the way a Slytherin would, or taunt him about it.  
  
 _That only makes it more attractive to owe him than it would someone from my House. It doesn’t mean that the debt doesn’t exist._  
  
Draco touched his forehead, wondering if he was going mental from the stress of recovering his true self, or just breaking from the Unspeakables and their forced training. He owed it to himself,  _not_  Potter, to stay sane and focused right now, or he wouldn’t get his revenge. Perhaps he should rest.  
  
He made his way to the guest quarters, although he wondered until he touched the door whether it was still assigned to him, or whether his things had been moved elsewhere. But when he opened the door, everything that belonged to him was still there. Not even the warded trunk looked as if it had been touched.  
  
 _Potter’s infected the whole pack with that Gryffindor sensibility,_ Draco thought idly, and sat down on the bed. He wouldn’t have resisted the temptation to at least look around the rooms of someone who had been an enemy. Who knew what interesting things they could have lying about?  
  
Draco smiled a little and lay down, then sat back up and pulled off his boots. Before, when he was an Unspeakable, that would have been something he did automatically; he was trained to be efficient, not to waste time with small chores. When he was Draco Malfoy of Malfoy Manor, he would have had a house-elf do it because he refused to be less than comfortable.  
  
Now, who was he?  
  
 _I can find out after I have a nap,_ Draco decided firmly, and closed his eyes.  
  
*  
  
“I don’t think you can trust him, my lord. And that means that you can’t trust him if he volunteered to help you with the defense of our territory.”  
  
June’s muscles were tense, and she didn’t take her eyes off Paracelsus as she slowly circled the cage. He turned to face her all the time, moving as if he had a greased table under his feet. His mouth was wide, his fangs visible. He had made no response to any words except a cackle.  
  
“Oh,” said Harry, and smiled when June glanced at him. “I never said that he would be a  _willing_ part of our defenses.”  
  
He had wanted June to investigate Paracelsus’s scent because she had the best nose for emotions in the pack, and should have been able to tell if he was lying should he volunteer something. June now tightened her shoulders in the way that indicated wary interest, even before her scent hit him. “What are you going to do to him, sir?”  
  
That was better than  _my lord,_ Harry supposed. Maybe someday he could make June and Sarah call him “Harry” with respect and mean it. “I’m going to make him a magical barrier.”  
  
June took a step backwards. Harry grinned at her. “Smart woman,” he said softly, and then began to walk in a circle around the cage himself, tracing his wand up and down.  
  
Paracelsus stopped turning, but began to laugh, with soft madness, as the bars grew razored and pressed in. He laughed as they cut his skin and made the blood flow. He laughed as the blood soaked the floor of the cage, and when Harry used his magic to gather it up in twining streams and sent it flowing into the air outside the cage.  
  
He didn’t laugh when Harry tried to scoop up a fallen drop on his finger. Then, he lunged.  
  
Harry fell back a single step, and he stood free and Paracelsus had cut himself more than ever. Paracelsus lay there, his body curled, his eyes so hard and hot that Harry could feel them like roasting pebbles on his skin. “June, leave us,” Harry murmured, without taking his gaze from the vampire.  
  
He heard the padding of her feet as she complied, almost running as she headed into the Forest. Well, that made sense. He had unnerved her, he knew. He would apologize for that later. For the moment, what mattered most was that Paracelsus had proved Harry’s theory.  
  
“You controlled yourself surprisingly well earlier for a vampire in the throes of blood-thrall,” Harry told him.  
  
Paracelsus leaned into the nearest bar, and more blood spilled down his arm. “I would not now, if I were free,” he said in a breathless little voice.  
  
“No, I know it,” said Harry. “But that was what Umbridge promised you, wasn’t it? My blood. She wants to kill me, and none of the others do. But if she could have you do it, then that would probably satisfy her.”  
  
Paracelsus turned in a small circle that, this time, held his arms and legs and even the sliver of his chest that showed between his arms—Harry had almost thought  _forelegs_ —away from the blades Harry had placed around him. “You have mistaken how dangerous she is. How dangerous anyone with a grudge is.” Paracelsus looked at him again, and Harry could have fallen down those dark tunnels if he wasn’t warier. “I thought we were master and prey.”  
  
Harry held his head back, and watched how Paracelsus’s attention settled on his throat. “Why me?” he had to ask. “There are dozens of werewolves you could have chosen, even werewolves who are pack leaders and have the magic that subdues or summons a pack. You didn’t  _have_ to choose me.”  
  
“I was curious about you,” Paracelsus whispered, and curled his fingers on the floor of the cage the way that Harry had curled his fingers on the Ministry floor when he was confronting Umbridge. “I wanted to see what kind of werewolf the Great Harry Potter would make.”  
  
Harry managed to keep himself from closing his eyes and sighing in disgust, but it was hard. Of course that was it. Even the vampire who Harry had thought he had a strange kind of companionship with, someone who would sometimes do what Harry asked and sometimes try to kill him and take his blood, was only another fan interested in the Great Boy-Who-Lived.  
  
“And then I smelled your blood for the first time, and I knew the thrall would come for me,” Paracelsus continued in a slightly wondering voice. “I don’t remember the last time that happened, not well. Just the passion, and the screams.”  
  
Harry opened his eyes again. Here was another strange thing. “You could feel yourself going into blood-thrall, and you didn’t  _leave_?” He knew that vampires called it blood-thrall because they would usually be enslaved to the taste of that chosen target’s blood until they killed them. Harry had never heard of one who would welcome that weakness with open arms.  
  
“I smelled your blood,” said Paracelsus again, and Harry suspected that was all the sense he would get out of him.  
  
“Well, now you’re going to help me defend what you almost destroyed,” said Harry. He knew it was useless to appeal to Paracelsus, or accuse him of treachery. What was done was done, and a vampire didn’t have loyalty to anything but its hunger. “Come, Paracelsus. Give me some more of your blood.”  
  
Paracelsus turned and leaned against the bars again. Harry watched him with so many complicated emotions in his mind, so many memories. Paracelsus bounding through the Forest, flinging rocks at Harry’s head that he could have killed him with and laughing hysterically when he failed. Paracelsus lunging at him and demanding his blood, or the low-voiced monster he had become the last time before Harry sent him away to spy at the Ministry. The way he had danced lightly, freely, among the trees and just seemed another kind of fellow magical creature, wanting to live free of the restrictions of the wizarding world.  
  
He was all of them at once. That was the truth. And he was a vampire in the throes of blood-thrall, who would attack Harry mercilessly if he was free, and was vulnerable to commands from his chosen prey right now, in the distant hope of getting a taste of Harry’s blood.  _This_ was why vampires despised the thrall. If it was deep enough, a child could command them to set themselves on fire with a sunlight spell, and they would do it. It hadn’t been deep enough until now, when Harry had Paracelsus caged and near enough to him to smell his blood and sweat.  
  
Now it was.  
  
“I wish that it could have been different,” Harry said, with a single inclination of his head to the fellow magical creature that he had thought Paracelsus was.  
  
Paracelsus crouched now with his back to Harry. His body was bare, his clothes shredded like his skin by the bars, and the slashes were bloodless. The blood that Harry had collected was from victims, transformed into something that could sustain Paracelsus only by the magic of a vampire’s veins, and he had none left.  
  
 _He will be starving._  
  
Harry quietly raised wards around the cage that only he could penetrate, and then stepped back and away. He knew he couldn’t have trusted Paracelsus, especially after he had betrayed Harry to his face and tried to attack and drain him, but still there was mourning in his heart.  
  
*  
  
“What are you  _doing_?”  
  
Potter glanced over his shoulder, looking surprised as Draco stormed up to him. “Defending my territory,” he replied, and smeared another handful of blood on the tree next to him. It shivered, black and wet, and Draco thought he saw the branches twist, as if the tree would like to get away from the blood.  
  
“You’re a fool,” Draco said, and reached for the heavy bell that hung on his belt, the one made of copper with a clapper of crystal. When he rang it once, the blood glowed with a deep violet color that only one kind had. Draco shook his head, in a dazed sort of awe. “Using the blood of a vampire, as though you can create wards out of that.”  
  
“I never said they were wards,” Potter replied, and handed the bucket of blood he held off to his assistant, a werewolf Draco didn’t know, who looked revolted, but accepted the task. He turned to face Draco fully, and his head projected forwards and his eyes glowed, making him look more like a wolf about to spring than he had even in the Ministry. “What’s the matter? Is it going to interfere with the crystal maze that you have in mind?”  
  
“No,” said Draco stiffly. He couldn’t believe that Potter had lived this long as the leader of a werewolf pack without grasping some basic lore. “But the blood of a vampire gives the characteristics of that particular vampire to the land, or trees, that it’s smeared on. At least, when used in quantities like this.” Glancing down, he saw enough blood in the bucket as the werewolf passed him to assume that Potter had drained Paracelsus. “Do you  _really_ want the power of a traitorous vampire surrounding you when you go forth to do battle?”  
  
Potter’s tongue lolled in place of laughter. “Even the blood of a vampire of in blood-thrall to me will do that?”  
  
Draco straightened up. “I saw the way he resisted your commands. If he was in blood-thrall to you, that wouldn’t have happened.”  
  
Potter shrugged, and now his face was grim again. Draco wondered if it was the treachery of one he had considered a friend that had brought him down. That made him even more of a fool than Draco had thought, to reckon a vampire a friend at any point.  
  
 _Then again, you once would have said the same thing about people who thought they had werewolf allies._  
  
Draco dismissed the notion impatiently. Yes, he had wasted the last few years of his life. It would not profit Draco if Potter wasted what could be the last few days of his own.  
  
“I don’t think he was in blood-thrall at the time,” Potter said. “Not completely. He is now. He turned around and slashed his skin on the bars of that cage when I told him to, and gave me the blood, even after I’d begun collecting it.”  
  
Draco stared in silence at Potter. Now he thought he understood the dampness of Potter’s emotions. He wasn’t the sort who would enjoy that kind of power. He would accept it and take it up, the way he had the leadership of the pack, but Draco thought that was more about wanting to live by his own rules and keep others safe than about wanting the pleasure of command.  
  
“That’s blood-thrall,” Draco said at last. “But he should have come to you first, in that case, and not gone to Umbridge.”  
  
“Umbridge is the only one who wants to kill me, instead of just get me out of the way or use me in some kind of experiment,” Potter said simply. “She apparently offered Paracelsus the chance to taste my blood, as long as he drained me fully and didn’t leave me alive. He accepted. Now, I think, he’s gone deeper than that.” He looked at the blood on the trees.  
  
Draco shook his head. He knew the stories, as well as Potter did, of vampires doing crazy deeds and putting themselves in danger to rescue favored prey. As far as he knew, though, no one had ever tried to use the blood of a vampire in that mental state to protect themselves. Draco had no idea what it would do.  
  
“If something goes wrong,” said Draco, “the way it may, even despite your precautions, I trust that you have some idea of how to get the blood quickly off the trees and the ground and away from your pack?”  
  
“Trust me for that, Malfoy,” said Potter, with a steady gaze over his shoulder. “I won’t let anything happen to someone I want to protect.”  
  
 _Which probably includes me._ But Draco refused to feel gratified by that. He could follow Potter’s logic. If Paracelsus wanted to preserve him alive until he could drink his blood, then the vampire’s blood should make the trees also defend Potter, and give them extra power to do so. But he didn’t know exactly if it would work, and that made Draco edgy in the same way that trying to modify an artifact before he fully understood it did.  
  
“You realize that we’re going to have be out on the front lines, so that we can use the cube, and thus out from under the trees that have the blood on them?” he tried one more time.   
  
Potter stared at him. “What do you mean? I’m going to be out in front, holding the cube, and the rest of you will be behind me.”  
  
 _Stupid Gryffindor._ Draco’s irritation was the only thing that gave him the courage to stop closer to Potter, ignoring the impact of those glowing eyes. “I’m the one who modified the artifact, and it belongs to my bloodline. I have to be the one to hold it.”  
  
“You didn’t say that.” Potter shifted his position restlessly, and glanced over his shoulder at the werewolf still daubing the bark.  
  
“I’m saying it now,” said Draco.  
  
“Then both of us will be there,” Potter said, and gave him another intense look. “It doesn’t mean that you’ll walk out there and face the danger on your own.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth, then shut it. He didn’t need to contest this. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it? The most powerful werewolf beside him, to help just in case the Ministry had come up with some means to get past the cube, or they attacked before Draco could really set the trap?  
  
Of course it was what he had wanted. That was why he had said “we,” referring to Potter and himself.  
  
But as he watched Potter pacing in a circle, answering questions that people brought him and setting up the pack in defensive positions, he wondered if he wouldn’t have felt better if Potter would have stayed behind, ringed by the trees that might specially protect him.  
  
It was ridiculous to feel that way. But unlike the Unspeakables, Draco was coming to accept that ridiculous things might still matter.


	22. Attack the Enemy

The howl that woke Draco woke him rolling, reaching for his wand before he was consciously aware that he was doing so. That was a howl of the kind that he heard regularly in his nightmares, from the time that Fenrir Greyback had haunted the Manor.  
  
Then he remembered where he was, and sat up, shaking his head. It was probably some sort of signal for the pack, and although Draco couldn’t interpret it, he could still decipher the events it produced.  
  
When Draco heard rushing feet, he nodded and stood up. The artifacts on his belt swung along with him. Draco touched the crystal cube dangling from its chain around his neck. A pity that he had always informed his superiors about what his artifacts did the second he had figured it out. He could have had some more surprises for them if he’d been more reserved.  
  
 _A fortnight ago you wouldn’t have been able to imagine rebelling against the Unspeakables at all._  
  
There  _was_ that. Draco knew he had a dangerous smile on his face as he strode to the door of his guest house and opened it, and for once, he didn’t try to hide it or worry about who was going to see.  
  
Another howl sounded. Draco saw a few more shapes gliding through the trees. He joined them, making sure to keep back and out of the way of the ones already wielding wands. He didn’t know the whole of Potter’s battle plan, but his artifact was too precious to risk in combat until everything was ready.  
  
“Malfoy.”  
  
Draco nearly leaped out of his skin. Potter had melted out of the darkness to stand at his side, his eyes wide and reflecting the moonlight that hid under the trees. Not a full moon, Draco saw, which deprived the werewolves of their most fearsome weapon. Then again, it would have been a nightmare procuring Wolfsbane for this many.   
  
 _Unless they do it on a regular basis._ There was too much that Draco hadn’t had time to learn about Potter’s pack.  
  
“You said that you needed to be at the center of the Forest, right?” Potter hardly waited for him to nod before he turned and began to lead Draco into the shadows of the highest branches. “You need to come with me, make sure you’re in the right position when they sweep down on us. They’re coming fast. Openly.”  
  
“I don’t need to be in the exact center,” Draco said, jogging after him and trying to imagine what the Unspeakable attack would look like from their side, the side he would have been on until less than a fortnight ago. Well, he wouldn’t have been in the middle of the attack unless they really needed someone to wield certain artifacts, but it was the principle of the thing that counted. “I need to be in the symbolic center. Can you arrange that?”  
  
Potter glanced at him, and didn’t ask the stupid questions that Draco had anticipated. Instead, he nodded. Impossible though it was without the moon to change him, Draco thought he saw a pelt of grey fur shimmering down the middle of his back, tipped with dew, as Potter made a sharp turn to the left and began guiding him along the course of a little creek. “This way.”  
  
Draco fell silent, content to follow Potter and watch the nape of his neck. They worked together better than they should, he thought. They were incredibly well-suited, they knew the moment when the time came to shut up and do as they were supposed to do, and that was…  
  
He didn’t know what it was. He didn’t know what it meant. Maybe he didn’t need to decide on that right now, only make sure that he and Potter were really as much in accord as he thought they were, and they could bring down this enemy.  
  
“Here.”  
  
Draco jerked to a stop. They were in front of Potter’s little house. He snorted a bit. “Is this the symbolic center just because you’re the leader of the pack?”  
  
“Of course it is.” Potter stepped away from him and faced towards the edge of the wood that was still ringing with howls. Draco thought the howls probably  _did_ convey information, but he wouldn’t put it past the werewolves to also use them to frighten the Unspeakables into pissing themselves. “It was the house where the former leader lived until I deposed him. And we don’t have a central clearing where we conduct rituals or something.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Do what you need to do.”  
  
Draco knelt down in the center of the clearing and briefly dropped his mind into the crystal. The maze he had created shimmered in response. Draco half-smiled. Yes, this was going to work the way he had thought it should. He reached out and cupped one hand in the air.  
  
Nothing touched it. Draco sighed, glad that he hadn’t trusted in his communion with Potter too much after all. “Potter. I need a drop of your blood.”  
  
“What for?” Potter’s voice did sound deeper than it had. Perhaps he was simply not repressing his growls around Draco right now.  
  
“You’re the symbolic center of this territory,” said Draco. “Not the place where you live. I should have thought of that before.”  
  
He expected a scolding for  _not_ thinking of it before, but Potter didn’t actually do that. He reached silently into his chest instead, and Draco heard the wet sound of flesh tearing open. He shuddered a little and turned his eyes back to the crystal. But he had to say something, even if he couldn’t watch. “You could have used your wand to cut yourself across the hand, you know.”  
  
“I could have, but the blood from near the heart is more symbolically powerful,” said Potter, and then he extended his hand and placed a careful drop of blood on top of the cube. “This is enough?”  
  
Draco nodded without saying anything. It was, and he appreciated, more than Potter could know, that he didn’t have to touch the werewolf blood. It probably didn’t carry much risk of infection, but there were debates about that in the Department of Mysteries, and they had few werewolves available to experiment with.  
  
Draco snorted in the next second.  _And I still think more like an Unspeakable than is comfortable to remember._  
  
“What?”  
  
Draco shook his head and glanced into the distance. The cries were getting closer, he thought, but they were in the confused sort of state where he couldn’t tell who was winning, if the howls were plain howls or also sounds of despair, and he also couldn’t distinguish the telltale noises of artifacts. “Nothing.”  
  
Potter was at least enough in tune with him to know when to let it go. They were still, and it was the stillness that let Draco feel the magic building in the air a second later.  
  
He turned his shoulder to Potter and said in a light tone, “They’re going to ring a bell that fills your mind with images of your worst fears. Be ready.”  
  
Potter shifted, and Draco thought he was bracing himself, the way Draco was. But instead of hunkering down, taking hold of something real to remind himself of what was solid in the midst of those hallucinations, Potter howled.  
  
The sound picked up Draco, swirled around him, filled his ears and his  _world_  with pouring sound. Draco shuddered and fought the urge to bring his hands up over his ears. This was too much, this was exploding and expanding around him, and he was—  
  
The ringing of the bell had ceased.  
  
Draco lifted his hands from his ears. For a moment, he wondered if Potter had really prevented anything by the howl. But then he heard the triumphant noises from the rest of the Forest, noises like howls, and no human sounds.  
  
“You gave them strength by your voice?” he murmured to Potter, not turning to look at him, his mind slipping into the crystal maze so that he almost missed the answer.  
  
“And you. It seems that you consider yourself part of my pack after all, Malfoy, even though you aren’t able to transform.”  
  
Luckily, Draco didn’t need to answer that, because he didn’t know what he would have said. He was in the middle of the maze, and it opened around him as shadows of walls, silhouettes of traps. He reached towards minds he knew well, minds without the tinge of wildness that marked the pack, minds with the familiar tang of steel. The self-control that Invisible Heldeson encouraged in all trainee Unspeakables was going to be their undoing.  
  
 _And hers._ Draco had been too often under her tutelage not to recognize that particular shimmering, bladed mind on the edge of the Apparition point.  
  
The maze was suddenly around them, and the transition between the cube and their own interiority was blurred, the way that the magic of an artifact blended with the magical core of an Unspeakable working it. Draco heard screaming, more like the screams of hawks than humans. The vicious cries shredded at the edge of his control, but he ignored that, clapping his hands together. The maze turned and moved with his hands, changing shape like tissue paper.  
  
Then their thoughts were trapped inside the maze, and Draco opened his eyes, knowing their bodies would be standing still, their minds drifting captive. They would try to find their way out of this particular puzzle, but they had no experience with the Forbidden Forest that was comparable to what they would have had if Draco had made the maze into an image of the Department of Mysteries.  
  
Draco turned his head, opening his mouth to reassure Potter that they had won.  
  
And saw Umbridge there, her hand upraised and her mouth curved with triumph, clutching a medallion shaped like a white disk—like a full moon, Draco realized a moment later—and Potter was shivering and twisting in the wake of its rays, his body warping and rushing with fur.  
  
*  
  
The beast’s mind was dark, filled with blood, the rage leaking in around the corners through the hole that he kept tamped shut most of the time.   
  
The blood told him what he had to do. It filled his mouth with teeth. It lined his toes with nails that could infect anything. It made his muscles coil, and he knew that he could spring on everything, and nothing would resist him.  
  
The moon was up.  
  
He spun around, rot in his nostrils, meat and salt and blood under skin beynd that. Beside him was a member of his pack. He knew that he didn’t smell like a wolf, but he was a member of his pack nevertheless. He stared at him with fear, but at the same time, the beast could hear the lingering echoes of his own howl in the air, and that howl had marked and freed the staring one. There was no need to attack him, not when he was pack.  
  
That left someone else.  
  
The beast faced the moon, the moon that was on the earth with no clouds or stars around it in the sky. That was strange. But the beast had seen stranger, and he knew that standing here with no blood in his mouth was worst of all. If there was the moon, that meant there had to be sky beyond it, open sky he could jump through.  
  
The beast sprang, and hit what he hadn’t seen for the light, hadn’t smelled for the rot and forest smells everywhere. Something that squealed and went down beneath him, and the moon disk spun away into the distance.  
  
It wasn’t the moon, it was  _magic._ And that made the one who had used it to threaten him a wizard. Not pack. Something soft and pummeling and stinking of the need to run.  
  
 _Food_.  
  
The beast tore into it, into her, because there was a smell of eggs and growth beneath it all, thick and spent. He rejoiced in the screaming. His prey screamed like this when it was best, when he was speeding through the trees with his pack beside him, and there was wind under his tail and shadows fleeting across the ground.  
  
“Potter.  _No_.”  
  
The first word didn’t matter to the beast, but the second word struck like a maddening whip into his flank. He knew that word. He hated it. He turned towards the member of his pack that had dared to disobey, a howl building up in his throat that would be more of a roar this time. He knew how it could rip, sometimes worse than claws.  
  
The member of his pack knelt down in front of him. That made the beast pause, because he knew that this one didn’t go on four legs. Pack though he was.  
  
The intense eyes, not as intense as they should be, looked into his, and then the member of the pack shook his head. “You can’t murder her,” he murmured. “You’ll hate yourself when you wake up. If you were killing her to defend your territory, that would be one thing, but not like this.”  
  
The beast prowled back and forth, slowly. Some of those words, he knew, but they slashed and slid into strange patterns in his mind. Some of the patterns were like muscles in the bodies of prey. But he didn’t know what they were doing there, and that made him snarl.  
  
“It’s all right,” said the member of his pack. He reached out. The beast focused on his paw. No, his hand. The word came back to him out of the blood and the dark. The hand landed slowly on his head. “I know you’re in there. Maybe more of you is in there than normal, because the real moon didn’t turn you. Can you listen to what I’m saying? Can you obey?”  
  
The beast threw back his head and howled once, and then pounced towards the member of his pack, because  _obey_ was a word he knew, and that wasn’t something he did. In seconds, he had the member of his pack on the ground underneath him, caged by his legs, their chests brushing, his teeth hovering above his pack member’s throat.  
  
The reek of fear was all around him, worse than the deep mildew and damp song of the fallen leaves. The beast wanted to bite. The reek was terrible. He wanted to gain clear air. He wanted to eat.  
  
But the pack member closed his eyes and tilted his head to the side, baring his throat. The beast made the desire to bite sit still, the way he would have tamed an impatient youngster. He lowered his head and sniffed in the space between the pack member’s neck and collarbone, trying to understand why this one was close to him when he wasn’t a werewolf.  
  
The pack member let him, and then reached up with a hand again. He had a stick in it. The beast growled at it. He remembered that he disliked sticks, but not why.  
  
“ _Finite Incantatem._ ”  
  
The pain flooded through him in reverse, the smells dropped away, the blood was no longer there. He could see, he could hear, he was on all fours, and he remembered his name, and Malfoy was beneath him.  
  
Harry writhed to the side. It was the only thing he could think of to do. His body hurt in a way that he hadn’t experienced since his first transformation. Well, this particular change had been caused by a magical artifact. That was probably the difference.  
  
He was thinking very, very carefully, so he didn’t need to think too closely about what he had almost done.  
  
Then he turned around, and saw Malfoy slowly rising to his feet, and Umbridge’s mangled body lying on the ground, and a whine erupted from his throat. Malfoy caught his breath, and then he was standing in front of Harry with a peculiar look on his face, one hand reaching out as if he would catch Harry’s mouth and clip his jaws shut.  
  
“You can’t,” he whispered. “Think about the way that your voice affects your pack. Even me. They’ll panic and run when they hear you whine, won’t they?”  
  
That was true. Harry slammed his eyes shut and dropped to his knees again, shaking. He wrapped his arms around himself and breathed through his mouth.  
  
“You kept me from killing Umbridge,” he said, when he could speak again. “Thank you.”  
  
“It might still need to be done,” said Malfoy, surprising him utterly. Harry looked up at her, blinking. “But not this way. You would have hated yourself for what you did. And it would have been murder. You would have been hunted down for it.”  
  
“You think I’m not going to be hunted down for infecting someone?” Harry turned his head to Umbridge, then turned away again. Despite being well-acquainted with the damage a werewolf’s claws and teeth could inflict, he found that he could barely look at those wounds without wanting to vomit.  
  
 _I made them. Just because the bloodlust was driving me, not because I wanted to._ Malfoy was right. If he was going to kill Umbridge, it should be execution and not murder.  
  
“I think that we won, and we have a right to choose how we want to respond now,” Malfoy said shortly. “Listen. Can you hear the Unspeakables attacking any longer?”  
  
Harry lifted his head and let his senses spread their cloak around him, the cloak that protected and defended him, and which most of the time simply brought him all the scents and sounds and sights of the Forest. There was silence in response. Harry swallowed a little. So everything was all right, then.   
  
“You put them in your maze?” he asked, and looked at the crystal cube in Malfoy’s hands.  
  
“Their minds,” Malfoy corrected him sharply, and then turned around and gave a smile in Umbridge’s direction. “But  _she_ isn’t an Unspeakable, so she wasn’t caught by the trap. I didn’t expect her to actually be here.” He gave Harry a quick glance, seemed not to find the comprehension he was looking for, and said, “What I mean is, we’re the ones who can determine what happens to her right now.”  
  
Harry made himself look at the wounds, and this time he nodded. He had tried to live with the consequences of his transformation and his decisions since then as best he could, not backing away from them. That was how rogue werewolves were born.   
  
“She’s infected now,” he said. “I can command her.”  
  
Malfoy gave a little sigh, but Harry could smell the satisfaction rising from his body.  
  
 _We’ll talk about how I recognized you as a member of my pack and that was enough to keep the beast from attacking you,_ Harry thought, as he made his way over to Umbridge.  _But later, when there’s something else to insulate us from the effects a little._  
  
Even if that thing was the punishment of an enemy.


	23. Bind the Beast

“What are you going to do?”  
  
Draco thought his question was eminently sensible, and he didn’t understand the almost indulgent look that Potter shot at him from under lowered eyelids. But he turned back to Umbridge a second later, so Draco didn’t have the chance to accuse him of acting strange.  
  
“I’m going to make sure that she has to tell the truth,” said Potter. Umbridge was lying on a bed in his house. Draco had been uncomfortable when Potter had said that he would bring her here, and he still thought she looked a little unnatural lying there. But if Potter wanted someone that tainted between his sheets, head resting on his pillow, Draco supposed that was his prerogative. “There are things a pack leader can do to a wolf he’s turned, that we can’t do to other people.” He gave Draco that indulgent look again.  
  
 _Pack._  
  
Draco felt a prickling heat working its way down his neck and onto his chest. He shook his head and reoriented himself into the questions he really wanted to ask. “And you think that she’ll obey you without a struggle? You think the rest of the pack will accept her?” The rest of the pack was out gathering up the motionless, entranced Unspeakables, and didn’t know about Umbridge yet.  
  
“I don’t intend to keep her here, so they don’t have to accept her.” Potter leaned over and looked at Umbridge in the way that Draco thought a werewolf would only ordinarily look at someone whose throat they wanted to tear out.  
  
 _Unlike me. They have to accept me, don’t they? Because I’m pack, whether or not they want me to be, because their crazy leader has declared me to be so._  
  
Draco shut his eyes. He couldn’t believe that he was thinking like this, and he couldn’t believe that he wasn’t more upset. Potter had somehow claimed him without a bite.  
  
Had it been because he was the one who had given Draco the shake that woke him up from his passive trance induced by the Unspeakables? Because he had agreed to go with Draco into the Ministry, a task so dangerous that no other member of the pack would do it? Because he had given Draco second chances instead of just sending him away immediately when he had gone scurrying back to Heldeson and Hinsley?  
  
Then Draco shook his head.  _I shouldn’t be worrying about it. And none of those theories sound likely, anyway. What’s more important is that it spared my life when Umbridge turned Potter into a wolf, and I doubt he’ll be taking that back._  
  
As he watched, Potter bent over Umbridge, even closer, and lifted one hand, his nails flexed as if he was going to tear open some of the wounds he had already inflicted. Draco had to admit, with an indifference to suffering that surprised him a little, that he wouldn’t mind seeing Umbridge bleed from them once again.  
  
But Potter didn’t do that. Instead, he dipped his head some more and breathed out, a thick, cold breath that Draco could feel even from here.  
  
“Dolores Umbridge,” he said. His voice held none of the hatred that Draco would have expected. Or maybe all the hatred was held at bay by the strict command he had learned that let him take control of a werewolf pack. “Beast. Made so by my own wild and uncontrolled bite.” Draco didn’t think there was regret behind his words, or if it was, it was well-hidden. “ _Come forth_.”  
  
Umbridge’s body convulsed as though something was trying to climb out of the middle of her belly. Draco jumped back before he realized that Potter wasn’t making her transform into a werewolf.  
  
Then Umbridge opened her eyes, and moaned.  
  
Potter nodded, not taking his eyes from her face. For a moment, Draco thought he was going to kill her, to rip out her throat, after all. But he didn’t, and the wounds that covered her body had already stopped bleeding. Draco supposed that was why Potter hadn’t been concerned about them beyond the application of one healing spell. Her werewolf metabolism was already taking over, rejecting the injuries and asserting itself in other things like an allergy to silver.  
  
“I’m a beast,” Umbridge whispered.  
  
In that one sentence was enough self-hatred to make years of revenge. Draco sighed in spite of himself, and Umbridge’s eyes shot over and fastened on him.  
  
“You were the one who betrayed us,” she whispered, in what sounded like growing horror. “You were the one who—I came to the Forest to  _rescue_ you, because you weren’t in the Ministry and you—”  
  
Potter snarled aloud, and Umbridge refocused on him. He was leaning over her and holding up one hand. Draco thought it looked almost as much like a paw as it had when Potter had actually transformed under the influence of Umbridge’s artifact.  
  
“You can’t say that,” Potter said. “Because that’s not true, is it? And your lies make me itch as though I had fleas.”  
  
Draco blinked. He didn’t think he’d like to have the power of a pack leader after all, if it caused physical pain to the pack leader instead of the person who was lying.  
  
Umbridge opened her mouth, sweating. Then she closed it again. She didn’t say a word.  
  
“Tell us the real reason that you came to the Forest,” Potter said, and the words were a command. Draco felt it shudder all through him, that longing to tell the truth, the honesty driven through his spine like a silver spike into the soil of the Forest.  
  
Umbridge either felt it less strongly or didn’t consider herself a member of the pack, because she fought and twisted on the bed in savage silence. Potter just watched her, and then clenched his hand down a little harder.  
  
“I c-came because I th-thought it was strange that Malfoy would walk back into the Ministry like that!” Umbridge squealed finally. Draco thought she sounded more like a pig than a wolf. “I kn-knew that he hated me, and I wanted to know more about the werewolf he had! The werewolf that was  _you_ ,” she added, with one more hate-filled glance at Potter that was probably because he had tricked her.  
  
Potter smiled at her, ducking his head. His hair swished wildly around his face, and Draco thought it gleamed grey for a moment, like the pelt of the wolf he had been. Strange that Potter’s fur wasn’t black, he thought idly, and then shook his own head hard. Was he seriously standing here and thinking about Potter’s fur?  
  
 _There are worse things you could be thinking about. Like all the artifacts that the Unspeakables had you concentrate on for so long._  
  
“And then my vampire didn’t come back,” Umbridge whispered, the words pouring out of her now like her blood had. “I knew you had him. I convinced the Unspeakables to give me an artifact that was known to be powerful over werewolves. And I came with you. When I saw how comfortable you were around him,” and her loathing-filled gaze switched back to Draco, “I knew you were a traitor after all.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth. He actually wasn’t sure how he meant to defend himself; he only knew that the emotion in Umbridge’s eyes required  _some_ sort of answer.  
  
“You will cease that.”  
  
Draco’s head rocked on his neck with the force of those words. Umbridge turned back to Potter, and her lips had parted to reveal her teeth, in a pathetic, cringing sneer that she seemed unaware of. “And what are you going to do if I don’t?”  
  
Draco wasn’t really sure what Potter wanted her to stop doing, but Umbridge seemed to understand him perfectly. And then Potter leaned over her until his nose was almost brushing hers—a sight that made Draco feel ill—and hissed out a few sharp words.  
  
“I’m going to make you crawl before me if you don’t stop staring at a member of my pack like that,” Potter whispered. “I’m the one who turned you. Do you know what I could make you do, if I wanted?”  
  
The impulse to protest at that also flashed through Draco. He knew Potter would never use his power like that, and it seemed deceptive and wrong of him to—  
  
 _To make Umbridge believe he would?_  
  
Draco sat slowly back. It would also be silly of him to object. Umbridge was exactly the sort of person, even as a werewolf, when her heightened sense of smell ought to have told her the truth, to believe that Potter would.  
  
“You wouldn’t,” said Umbridge, but there was nothing of the force of conviction that Draco or Potter’s friends would have been able to put behind the words. She lay there with her hands drawn up across her bosom like wounded paws, and stared at Potter in the same dreadful fascination Draco had seen her use to look at him during Hogwarts.  
  
“I would,” said Potter. “Not with most members of my pack. They came to me seeking sanctuary. I didn’t turn them. But with you? Yes, I would do that.” He reached out one hand, so slowly that Draco didn’t have the time to anticipate what he would do before he did it. He gave Umbridge a solid slap across both cheeks, and she recoiled with a little howl.   
  
“Because you hate us,” Potter went on, in a tone that sounded almost expert, as if he were a Healer identifying an illness. “Because you hate us even more now that you’re one of us. I would rather live through another transformation without Wolfsbane than have you in my pack, thinking that you could do there what you tried to do to werewolves in the past.”  
  
“Then send me away!” There was foam at the corners of Umbridge’s mouth now, and Draco smiled a little, thinking how embarrassed she would be if she could see herself from the outside. “You don’t have to keep me here! Send me  _away!_ ”  
  
“Would that I could,” Potter said calmly. “But you would probably go right back to the Ministry and back to persecuting werewolves. You think this is the worst thing that can possibly happen to someone, so you’d try to hide your infection. And then I would be responsible for the people that you bit because you wouldn’t try and get Wolfsbane.” He sat back on his heels and looked at Umbridge thoughtfully for a moment. “I would never have chosen to turn you if I was in my right mind. But—”  
  
Then he went still, and Draco saw the moment when a new plan came into his mind.  
  
“What?” Draco whispered from the side, a little ashamed that he couldn’t control his curiosity, but also not seeing why he should have to when Umbridge’s attention was fastened so securely on Potter.  
  
“There’s something I have to know,” Potter said, and this time, he clicked his teeth together and made a pass with his hand over Umbridge’s face that made Draco jump. He could  _feel_ the magic settling around the room, the power that squeezed and squeezed, and he knew then that no one would be able to utter a lie in this room even if they wanted to. “The truth,” Potter said, almost lovingly, and stroked Umbridge’s hair. “Why did you decide that you had to get revenge on me now, when you’d gone years without doing it? Why did you decide that sending Draco would accomplish it?”  
  
Draco started at the sound of his name, and felt that go deeper into his soul than the magic had done. But Potter never looked at him, and Draco didn’t think Umbridge’s eyes were capable of turning elsewhere, so at least she didn’t seem to have noticed that the intimacy implied by the use of his first name was new to Draco. He slowly settled back, and watched Umbridge’s mouth open wider and wider, the more Potter touched her hair.  
  
“I heard that you were a filthy  _beast_ ,” Umbridge whispered, and if she saw the irony in calling him that when she was one herself now, she didn’t let it stop her. “And I wondered how I could get to you. But you were almost in sight of Hogwarts, and there were always people willing to defend you there.”  
  
Draco caught the wry little twist of Potter’s mouth, and snorted himself. Umbridge made it sound like that was some moral failing on the part of the professors of Hogwarts, rather than considering what she might have had to do it with it.  
  
 _How is she ever going to survive her first transformation? She’ll probably make up a story about whose paws those are on the ground in front of her._  
  
“So I couldn’t do anything,” Umbridge continued bitterly. “And I couldn’t do anything for years. But then I heard about Thornsberry and your misguided plan to adopt him, and I knew I had to do  _something_.” She turned her head, and this time her gaze went to Draco, but it was far easier to meet than it would have been if she was still human, Draco mused. “And I realized that sending Malfoy would accomplish something.”  
  
“What would it accomplish?” Potter’s voice was almost musical, almost lulling, like the sound of crashing waves on a shore. Draco shook his own head sharply to wake himself up. He certainly wasn’t about to succumb and become Potter’s eager, panting dog.  
  
“It would show that someone who should have suffered more than he did could bring down another person who should have suffered more than he did.” Umbridge bared her teeth at Draco. “He should have  _gone to Azkaban_ after the war. He did more than I did! And instead, he got taken in by the Department of Mysteries and coddled like a puppy.”  
  
A second later, she put one hand to her mouth as though she’d felt herself baring her teeth and was horrified, but Draco couldn’t enjoy that. He was shaking his head a little as he thought about it. Umbridge envied him for the slavery to the Unspeakables that he had so barely escaped.  
  
 _Well, of course she does. She thinks working for the Ministry is the best thing that could ever happen to someone. She would give a lot now to be in an important position in the Department of Mysteries._  
  
That did remind Draco of something he wanted to ask, and perhaps should have asked before, and he caught Potter’s eye and murmured, “The Minister?”  
  
Luckily, Potter understood what he meant without Draco having to make it more explicit. He turned back to Umbridge with a baring of teeth that made Draco catch his breath, and Umbridge bring up her hands over her eyes. “How could you blackmail the Minister and Invisible Heldeson into supporting you, if you don’t hold an important position anymore? Why would they listen to someone who had been in Azkaban?”  
  
 _She was only in Azkaban for six months,_ Draco thought, because that wasn’t the way he would have asked the question. But it was true that he had been startled to see Umbridge having any power, and he eagerly awaited the answer.  
  
Umbridge whined and whimpered and thrashed a little, but it was no good, and she finally spat out the heavy words. “The Minister—before he was Minister, he did something he shouldn’t have done. I found out about it, and he had to listen to me.”  
  
 _And she still won’t mention what it is,_ Draco thought, rolling his eyes.  _It’s not like that secret is going to do her any good now._  
  
Potter either didn’t care about that secret, or wanted to push Umbridge on to say something else, something more damning. “And Invisible Heldeson?”  
  
Umbridge flinched and rolled. Potter was right with her, snarling into her face, compelling her to answer with hot breath and visible canines.  
  
 _He wouldn’t need to use those things to persuade me to speak,_ Draco thought, suddenly, shockingly, and flushed.   
  
Potter turned his head a little, as though a stray breeze had brought him Draco’s scent, but Umbridge answered then, and he went back to listening to her.  
  
“She wanted an excuse to have a werewolf she could study,” Umbridge whispered. “A werewolf no one would miss.”  
  
Potter half-showed his teeth, just a little bend and wrinkle of his lip. Having seen what he could do when he wanted to, Draco was more impressed at the way he held back. “And she thought that no one would miss  _me_  when I disappeared?”  
  
“No, the plan was always to kill you finally,” Umbridge said, and gave another hate-filled glance at Potter. “But she thought that in the chaos of you vanishing or dying or getting imprisoned, she could grab one of your wolves.”  
  
Potter sat back on his heels, and Draco saw the moment when he decided not to spare Invisible Heldeson, either.  
  
“You still want me dead,” Potter said.  
  
Umbridge only stared. Draco reckoned that Potter could tell that much from her scent, which made it strange for him to speak aloud to himself, but Potter went on, with a meditative expression, as if he was explaining things to his pack.  
  
 _He is explaining things to his pack. You’re pack._  
  
Draco shivered and wrapped his arms around himself, still watching intently.  
  
“You’ll always want me dead. You’re not affected even by the magic that should make you feel welcome when I’m the one who turned you, because you hate werewolves so much and you hate me so much. I can’t let you go because of the reasons I already mentioned. I have to dispose of you somehow.”  
  
Potter abruptly looked across and smiled at Draco. “There are members of my pack who would object to getting rid of her,” he said. “She’s a wolf now, and they would never understand why I can’t trust her. But you’ll help me.”  
  
Draco wanted to protest at the almost lordly way Potter had of saying that, but it was true, and after a second he nodded.  
  
“Then you can come with me,” Potter said, and restrained Umbridge with ropes that he conjured with a flick of his wand, and began marching her through the woods, dragging her along with the rope around her waist. Draco followed slowly, keeping well behind Umbridge so that her snapping teeth would stand no chance of infecting him. He still didn’t know what Potter intended to do.  
  
Then he made out the cage in which Paracelsus crouched, and he understood.


	24. Feed the Vampire

“Paracelsus.”  
  
For a moment, Harry didn’t think his command would work. There were vampires far gone in blood-thrall who could come back, but Harry had never seen one who looked like that.  
  
It was a creature made of sticks that crouched in that cage, his head hanging down, his hands braced mindlessly on the floor in front of him as though he was going to tear it up. Paracelsus’s shoulders were bare curves, and his slit skin dangled and flapped, and his face was nearly translucent. Harry shook his head. The smell coming from him was barely existent, the way that bare stone might smell.  
  
“I have a victim for you,” he said. “Blood.” He paused, but it became obvious that words alone weren’t going to change things. Harry turned and sliced his teeth down Umbridge’s shoulder.  
  
Of everything, that was what got her to shriek in surprise and kick against the ropes, wrenching her muscles as she tried to stare at him. Harry smiled back with a mouth full of blood. Umbridge’s jaws parted as if she would scream.  
  
Paracelsus snapped his head around and leaped at the bars of the cage.  
  
They were still holding, of course, and still razored, so all he could do was rip himself up further. He didn’t seem to notice, or care. His fingers clawed at nothing, his gaze fastened on Umbridge as if she had become the center of his existence.  
  
Umbridge opened her mouth to yell again, but then she stayed silent. Harry noticed why, and smiled. She had fallen into the emptiness inside Paracelsus’s eyes. It was something that Harry wouldn’t have been vulnerable to, considering his greater power and knowledge of vampires, but Umbridge was only a newly-turned werewolf. No kind of resistance would have come to her yet, and she didn’t know how to use her strength.  
  
 _She’d probably despise it, anyway._  
  
“I have a gift for you,” Harry gently told Paracelsus. “You’ll eat, and then you’ll go.” He knew that the problem with vampires in blood-thrall was that they generally couldn’t bring themselves to drink any blood other than that of the person they were obsessed with.  
  
But Umbridge was a werewolf too now, and while her blood wouldn’t have the same scent or taste as his, it would have some of the same kick that Paracelsus wanted. And Harry thought that a vampire this far gone might get a bit—confused. Let their instincts take over, and their obsession could switch to another person.  
  
The way that Paracelsus was slavering suggested it, anyway. He might not have heard Harry’s words at all.   
  
Harry paused. This was a risk, the same way that exiling Umbridge from the pack would have been. Paracelsus might turn on Harry when he had his mind back.  
  
Then again, Harry knew he could kill Paracelsus if he had to. He would just prefer not to have to, for the sake of the comradeship that had been between them, and the way that Paracelsus had atoned for his betrayal.  
  
“Good,” said Harry, aware that Malfoy was staring at him from the side with wide eyes, and his scent was sweetening and thickening the air between them. Harry licked his lips. He would have to deal with what was happening between them—something unexpected—and soon, but for now, he had a vampire to feed.  
  
He dragged Umbridge forwards. He knew she would have come without resistance, but on the other hand, so much of her will was gone that she couldn’t even move her own limbs, so Harry still had to provide the motion for her.  
  
He bent and shoved when she was near the cage, and she tripped, gashing her hand open on one of the bars. She managed to look down, breaking the grip of Paracelsus’s eyes, and drew in breath to shriek.  
  
Then Paracelsus was on her.  
  
He could only reach her hand through the bars, but it was enough. He held it, and he guzzled, and Harry could  _see_ the blood flashing through his body and repairing the damage. Harry had wondered if it would be useful at all, or if the blood would simply run out through the gashes and leak onto the floor of the cage. Perhaps he had damaged Paracelsus so badly that all reclamation efforts would be in vain.  
  
But they weren’t. Paracelsus’s skin shone for a second, and then he was tipping his head back to get the drops of blood down his throat, using his tongue to clean up the area around his fangs. He was thickening drink by drink, his transparency fading, and Harry thought he could see bones whirling into view, as if assembled out of the molecules of the air.  
  
Umbridge gave a short, low sound that reminded Harry of some of the pants of his pack when they were newly turned.   
  
Paracelsus smiled and looked into her eyes, and whispered something Harry couldn’t make out, even with his ears. It was entirely possible that Umbridge didn’t really understand it either, but there, that was less of a problem. She sagged forwards and laid her chin on the bars.  
  
More blood flowed.  
  
Paracelsus stuck his fangs out and into her chin, dragging her face between the bars, closer and closer like a lover. Her cheeks opened. Her scalp was slit. Her face was a mask of red in seconds, and still Paracelsus held her there and drank and laughed, his fingers plunging deep into the corners of her eyes. Harry thought he saw the bones of Paracelsus’s fingers pierce her eye sockets themselves, and still Umbridge gasped and tilted her head back, compelled to offer more and more.  
  
Harry heard Malfoy turn away, and thought he smelled vomit a second later. He didn’t look away, though. He was the one who had inflicted this punishment on Umbridge, who was technically a member of his pack, even if he had turned her against his will. He would watch until the end.  
  
The end was Paracelsus sucking Umbridge down, tugging a tattered skull and neck through the bars, making the bars or Umbridge’s body yield by sheer recovered strength. Harry wasn’t sure at what point Umbridge died. He was used to knowing that by the smell of a body’s blood or the cessation of their heartbeat, but there was nothing except blood here, and the roaring of Umbridge’s heart was drowned by the roaring of his own in his ears.  
  
Paracelsus finally pulled back and tilted his mouth towards the sky with a wordless roar. Umbridge lay on the ground, no longer human or werewolf. Harry didn’t know what to call this mess of broken bones and empty meat, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know.  
  
He would rather look at Paracelsus instead.  
  
Paracelsus paced back and forth on his hands and knees for a moment. He wasn’t completely recovered, Harry saw. Harry had drained his body of so much blood that even drinking down a whole human couldn’t bring it all back. There was still a sharpness around his jaws that shouldn’t be there. His smile was wider than usual, as if he didn’t have enough mass to his lips.  
  
But his eyes were wild, and when he paused and gazed at Harry, Harry nearly didn’t have the will to withstand it.  
  
“Very clever,” Paracelsus breathed. “To guess that when I was that deep in blood-thrall, I would take any blood to sustain me, and draining a whole body would be like belonging to a new person.”  
  
“You can’t stay here,” Harry said. “And you can’t have me.”  
  
“I know that now,” said Paracelsus, and he tilted his head downwards and gave Harry a flash of fangs that was almost flirtatious. “If you let me out of this cage, then I’ll go back to the Ministry and wreak havoc on my enemies there.”  
  
Harry gave him a stern, skeptical stare.  
  
“It was worth asking, just to see what you would say,” said Paracelsus, and laughed to himself. “You’re too vulnerable to me and what I know to let me go. But you fed me back to life instead of letting me die, the way you also could have. What are you going to do now?” He settled back on his hands and heels, as easily as any four-legged animal.  
  
Harry studied him, but the question seemed to be sincere. Paracelsus really did want to see what he would do next. Harry supposed it would have entertainment value for an immortal blood-drinker who had never run into this situation before.  
  
“I want you to make the Blood-Gift Oath.”  
  
Malfoy made a strangled sound behind him. Harry shifted his weight a little. He had nearly forgotten that Malfoy was there, caught up as he was in the staring contest with Paracelsus, except in the way that he remembered any of his pack were present, as a constant, soft, thrumming presence in the background. But now he wanted to make sure that Paracelsus didn’t get any ideas about using Malfoy for an easy meal.  
  
Paracelsus had stopped smiling. Harry wondered for a moment how he could tell, because his fangs were still bare, and it wasn’t like he had changed the lines of his face much.  
  
But he had been around vampires long enough for it to sink in, maybe. Harry just waited. He still held the power here, although Paracelsus could severely test the cage if he wanted to break free.  
  
“You should not have heard of that,” said Paracelsus.  
  
“I heard of it from another vampire,” said Harry, granting Paracelsus the only reassurance he could at this point, that Paracelsus wasn’t the one who had revealed it to him in some careless moment of the blood-thrall. “I wasn’t sure it was real. But I asked you a question one day that related to it, and your reaction confirmed it.”  
  
Paracelsus hissed a little. “They underestimate you, those enemies of yours who think you incapable of planning.”  
  
“I play more directly by preference only,” Harry said. “As pack leader, I can. Now, I want to know if you’re going to make the Oath.”  
  
Paracelsus turned his head away for a second and considered the depths of the Forest as though wondering how well they would hide him. Harry waited. He knew the answer was “not very well,” not when Harry knew the dark places of the Forest and also had treaties with forest creatures like centaurs who would point a fleeing vampire out to him.  
  
Paracelsus finally turned around and said, “You did not fulfill one of the conditions of the Oath.”  
  
“Tell me which ones.” Harry kept his body loose and relaxed. He supposed it could be true, and if that was true, he would simply keep Paracelsus captive until he  _had_ fulfilled the conditions. He wasn’t going to let Paracelsus run off and take all chances of future peace between Harry’s pack and him away.  
  
“You haven’t given me your blood,” said Paracelsus, and his hands strayed towards the bars before retreating to his sides.  
  
Harry took that as an excellent sign. Vampires didn’t often forget about their surroundings. If Paracelsus had for a moment, that meant he was distracted with other things. “I did, before I drained you of it. And I know that the Oath doesn’t demand that the gift of blood be recent. Or fair. Only that it happen.”  
  
Paracelsus paused, his head weaving back and forth. He had focused on Harry now, as much as Harry could wish. He hissed threateningly. Harry accepted the hiss, and only watched him some more.  
  
“You haven’t told me what you would promise me in return for my Oath.”  
  
“Your freedom, unharassed by any member of my pack,” Harry said. “Including me. I would forgive your betrayal and try nothing else to get in touch with you or punish you.”  
  
He smiled as he  _felt_  Malfoy’s stirring reaction, the impulse to speak, out of the corner of his eye. Yes, Malfoy was about to object that vampires didn’t have conventional notions of fairness. And he had probably remembered at the last moment, as Harry had been thinking all along, that that only meant vampires didn’t have the same notions of fairness as other people. He would know that a vampire given blood willingly, allowed to drain a victim dry, might consider fairness in a way that a starved vampire or a simply defeated one wouldn’t.  
  
Paracelsus arched his back and bared his fangs again. Harry looked back at him, silently demanding that Paracelsus consider whether he  _would_ find that display as threatening as anyone else did.  
  
“You have no idea what you ask of me,” said Paracelsus.  
  
Harry had to smile at that. “No, I think I know pretty well. Otherwise, I would have come up with something else.”  
  
Paracelsus’s eyes locked on him again, and he made a gesture with one hand that Harry knew was rude. He didn’t complete it. Harry didn’t even have to growl. He just had to stand there, and let Paracelsus consider their relative positions of power, and whether he would achieve what he wanted if he stayed in the cage.  
  
“You still desire to protect your pack before all else,” Paracelsus said, and his tone was strange. Perhaps his eyes had flickered over to the side, to Malfoy, before he brought them back to Harry. Harry honestly wasn’t interested in that.  
  
“I do,” Harry agreed.   
  
“You don’t desire the freedom  _I_ could have given you.” Paracelsus was almost whispering by now, hunching forwards as if the bars would bend aside and let him through in a second because Harry was sorry.   
  
“What freedom was that?” Harry lifted his head higher, knowing that the sight of his bare throat was taunting Paracelsus, a bit, but unable to help it. “The freedom to be your slave whose blood you drained whenever you had a chance? That doesn’t sound much like freedom to me.”  
  
“I could have turned you. Made you something so powerful that the like hasn’t been seen for a thousand years.”  
  
“I have all the power I want already,” said Harry calmly. “And enough that I scare people. And I would have had to leave my pack.”  
  
“But you would have been with  _me_.”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows and considered Paracelsus for a long moment. He was leaning forwards so that his weight was almost all on his hands now, only his toes supporting the weight of the rest of his body. He stared at Harry with those longing eyes that almost made Harry want to say yes, just to see what it would be like.  
  
And then he broke the spell and stepped back, shaking his head. “No. No thanks.”  
  
Paracelsus made an aggrieved sound, and then shut his eyes and turned his head away. “I can smell the truth,” he said. “I will make the Blood-Gift Oath with you.”  
  
 _Interesting phrasing, when he’s the one who’s going to be swearing the oath,_ Harry thought, but he let it go. He thought Paracelsus had probably been fooling himself into thinking that Harry wanted what he could offer all along, and needed some time to recover from the realization that Harry had been telling the truth when he said he wanted peace and his pack.  
  
Paracelsus held his hand out, and the razor bars tore his new skin and ripped free a single drop of blood. Harry said steadily, “For this blood, given to you by my gift, I ask that you swear to stay away from my pack.”  
  
“So sworn,” said Paracelsus.  
  
The air crackled with power like an invisible lightning bolt. Harry felt as though someone had tightened a band around his chest a second later. He nodded in satisfaction. “And I want you to swear that you won’t betray any of my secrets to the Ministry, or anyone else.”  
  
“So sworn,” said Paracelsus, as another drop slid free. This one looked as if it was sliding down a straw.  
  
“Those are the terms of this Blood-Gift Oath,” Harry said. “May the blood in your veins turn against you and your fangs crumble to dust if you break it.”  
  
Paracelsus shuddered a little, as if that was something he had seen happening and wanted to avoid, although Harry was only using the traditional phrasing that he knew went with the Blood-Gift Oath. Then he pulled his wrist back inside the cage and said with a certain hoarse haughtiness in his voice, “I would  _appreciate_  it if you would let me out now.”  
  
“Yes,” said Harry, and he used his wand to dissolve the bars and make the cage vanish. Paracelsus dropped lightly to the ground, on hands and toes, and then spun around to look up at Harry.  
  
There was nothing in his eyes of the vampire who had crawled to Harry’s feet and begged for his blood when he was in the depths of the thrall. There was almost nothing there at all, except feral desire.   
  
“No,” said Harry, answering the hope that it seemed Paracelsus had entertained at some level. He had wanted to drink from Harry, he had wanted to drain him, but it seemed that he had also wanted to make him over anew, to give him pleasure, perhaps to travel with him.  
  
Paracelsus might be a strange vampire, but he had a notion of dignity after all. He turned and leaped silently into the Forest. Harry watched him go until he could no longer distinguish the shadow of the vampire’s motion from the shadows of the trees.  
  
Then he turned around and looked at Malfoy, and made sure that his gaze was both heavier and warmer. “And it seems that we have to consider what  _you_ want, now that you’re a member of my pack.”


	25. Cooperate

"I'm not..." Draco found his voice bleeding away, perhaps a good thing. He had no idea what he would have said, given the mind-destroying way Potter moved towards him, more lean and rippling muscle than even in his wolf form.  
  
Potter shone, eyes and expression deep with amusement. He put a hand under Draco's chin and tilted his head back in a way that made Draco violently aware of how this position exposed his throat. "What were you going to say? That you're not a member of my pack? But the way my wolf responded to and kept you safe from himself shows that you are, very clearly."  
  
It was hard to think with Potter's hot breath in his face like that. Draco reached up and closed his fingers around the knuckles of the hand holding his chin to give himself courage. "I won't let you bite me," he said. In the middle of his daze, it was the one thing he was still sure of.  
  
“I never intended to bite you.” Potter’s voice was near his ear now, and Draco found himself unsure of when Potter had moved, let alone what his next move was likely to be. “I like that you’re the first human member of my pack, and I’d like to explore what that means. I hardly can if I turn you into a werewolf, now can I?”  
  
Draco swallowed. “No.” His voice still came out softer and more tentative than he wanted. He shook his head and started to say something else.  
  
Potter seemed to think his agreement was all he needed. “Good,” he said, still whispering, and then abruptly leaned down and kissed Draco’s throat.  
  
The sheer heat of his mouth, the unexpectedness of it, the way that his breath seemed to wash over the corner of Draco’s lips even with his mouth busy, all went to Draco’s head. He kissed back, and found himself sucking Potter’s earlobe, not quite sure of what had happened.  
  
 _Wait. This must mean--wait--_  
  
But Potter didn’t let him wait, and Draco admitted he didn’t want to wait either. It wasn’t as though his attraction to Potter was unexpected, unlike some of the other things happening here, and he wasn’t reluctant. Once he knew Potter wouldn’t bite him, it was surprisingly easy to lean back into the kissing and the stumbling around and let Potter have his way, as Draco had let him do with a few other things in the past.  
  
And Potter could kiss.  
  
His mouth might be unnaturally hot because it was a werewolf’s mouth, but it was also unnaturally good at this, maybe for the same cause. Draco’s tongue met another tongue, and then Potter braced him against the trunk of a tree and tore his mouth away, only to fasten it again, sucking, on Draco’s belly. Draco wondered if Potter was really going for what he thought he was going for, kneeling down and sucking him. It seemed like a strange thing for an all-powerful pack leader to do.  
  
Potter looked up at him with a dark, mischievous smile, and Draco could almost hear the retort, even though Potter didn't make it out loud.  _I told you that I wasn’t all-powerful._  
  
At the very least, when Potter tore his robes away and got to work with his mouth on Draco’s cock, Draco didn’t protest. Unless the groans coming out of his throat on a regular basis and the way his own throat worked in time to Potter’s swallows was a kind of protest that even he had never learned the name of.  
  
*  
  
Malfoy smelled delicious. Harry could confirm that now when he got his mouth around him, and the smell intensified instead of diminishing.  
  
Harry couldn’t remember how long it was since he had done this. What mattered was that it had been a long time, and never with a member of his pack, as close he had grown with some of them and as much as he had wanted to. There was just too much chance that it would turn into accusations of favoritism or make the atmosphere in the pack sick and tainted when the affair ended, as it probably would. And Harry didn’t want someone who was concentrating on being a werewolf and wanted the favor of the pack leader to learn about and challenge him. Most of the people who had offered had been that way.  
  
He wanted someone he could be close to, though. Someone whose scent he knew, someone who would roll on the ground with him and ask for more and not mind if he sometimes gave attention to other members of the pack. And someone who had a difference of some sort, so that no  _other_ packmates would think about them in the same way.  
  
Malfoy was perfect.  
  
Perfectly smelly, and perfectly strong, and perfect in the way that he kept arching towards Harry’s mouth, and didn’t stop once he’d begun. His voice was a series of low moans, strong enough that Harry clenched his hands on Malfoy’s hips. He was greedy, and he didn’t want to share if anyone else heard them and came along to see what was happening.  
  
But his head spun then and the thoughts went away, and what  _really_ mattered was Malfoy almost sinking into the bark of the tree Harry had him pinned against, almost falling into a trance state, almost melting as he came. Harry swallowed that down with an easy flick of his tongue. Once he wouldn’t have been so blasé about it, but he had eaten a lot worse when he ranged through the forest in wolf form.  
  
Malfoy slid down to the ground, and Harry was there to catch him, to draw him close and murmur, and let Malfoy sit in his lap instead of on the leaf mold. That worked for a moment, at least while Malfoy was leaning close against him and catching his breath.  
  
Then he leaned back and shoved a little at Harry's shoulders and said with his haughtiest sneer, “Malfoys don’t depend on anyone else for support, you know.”  
  
“I know that,” said Harry, keeping his voice as light as wind, and went back to casually nuzzling along the side of Malfoy’s throat.  
  
“You do.” Malfoy didn’t even manage to make that a question, he was so surprised.  
  
“Mmm.” Harry let his complaint trail away into what was almost a growl, a warm one, and then leaned back and put a hand behind Malfoy’s neck and looked into his eyes. “Think I could persuade you to return the favor--Draco?”  
  
*  
  
Draco shivered. He felt as though he had been put through a hard gallop and then brought back and told that he would have to do it all over again, that he hadn’t achieved the goal.  
  
 _Whatever the goal was in the first place._  
  
But he had another reason for his hesitation, one that he spoke of carefully, because Potter was looking at him with warm, possessive eyes and Draco found that he didn’t want to upset him. “One thing first. Would swallowing a werewolf’s semen turn me into a werewolf?”  
  
Potter’s eyes opened wide, and then he laughed, a sound that wasn’t a bark, but went deeper into his chest than Draco had ever heard a laugh go. Draco felt his cheeks warm, but he stubbornly held Potter's gaze. He might be a fool, but at least he would be a human fool.  
  
“That would be an innovative way to transform, but no.” Potter stroked his cheek. “I’ve never heard of any werewolf that could turn someone that way, or there would be more of them, considering that werewolves often have human-formed lovers.”  
  
Draco heard the warning in  _human-formed,_ and nodded. There were certain thoughts that would get him in trouble if he expressed them here, and he was willing to give up the expression and concentrate on other things instead. “Then I’d like to suck you.”  
  
Potter’s breath caught, his eyes warming like spring. “And will you call me Harry?” he asked, as Draco started to push his way off his lap.  
  
Draco blinked, caught. Why should that request be so much more difficult than actually having a werewolf’s cock in his mouth?  
  
“You don’t have to,” Potter said, and his voice was tender and resigned both at once. He grazed the back of his knuckles down Draco’s cheek and started to pull away, with reluctance that Draco could feel through his bones.  
  
“No, damn it,” said Draco, and Potter halted and blinked, probably wondering what or who he was swearing at. “Why should I have to put off calling you by your name if I want to?”  
  
“Er, I don’t know?” Potter said, and then shook his head as if he had realized that it was a question and Mr. All-Powerful Pack Leader shouldn’t ask a question of anyone. “But I thought you didn’t want to. Call me Harry, I mean.”  
  
“I’m going to do it if I want to,” Draco said, and gave him a sloppy kiss. “It was only some loyalty to the Unspeakables or an old idea of myself that was keeping me from it, and honestly, I like the new me better.” He dropped to his knees, and told himself that he could use Cleaning Charms later.  
  
Harry leaned back slowly against the tree that he’d earlier had Draco against. His eyes were bright enough that Draco almost fancied he could see a faint light shining from them, piercing the darkness. “Whatever you like.”  
  
“I like,” said Draco, and he thought it would, because it was something that he had never done before, unlike sitting behind a desk or reforming artifacts or cowering in fear of Unspeakable Heldeson.  
  
Harry was already removing his clothes, and Draco started a little at the size of his cock. “It wasn’t like I did this all the time,” he added defensively, when he felt how heavy Harry’s gaze was on the back of his neck.   
  
“I’m pleased.”  
  
Draco stretched himself into the husky appreciation in Harry’s voice, and then bent over and applied his mouth.  
  
The steady sucking made Harry twitch and give a single great gasp. Draco would have asked if he was okay, except he had a pulse right next to his face, telling him that of course Harry was, and he also had better things to do with his mouth. He stuck out his tongue, carefully learning the taste and shape and scent of it, and Harry grunted and pushed down.  
  
Draco choked and pulled his head back. “Don’t  _do_ that! There are benefits to inexperience, but that’s not one of them!”  
  
“Sorry,” Harry panted, and his tongue lolled as he stared at Draco out of obsessive, burning eyes. “It’s just you’re so good.”  
  
Draco sniffed a little, and hoped that his cheeks weren’t flushing as much at the compliment as he thought they were. “And compliments do me no good if I’m dead because you pierced the back of my throat with your cock.”  
  
Harry looked appropriately stricken, and Draco decided he could modify the threat a little. “Not that that’s likely to happen,” he added. “But it could. So don’t shove yourself down my throat, okay?”  
  
Harry nodded again, looking even more stricken, and took hold of his own hips as though his body was a misbehaving dog that he had to hold back. Draco controlled a chuckle--it simply felt so  _good_  to be in control like this again, capable of telling someone off, which he wouldn’t have tried when he was an Unspeakable--and bent down again.  
  
This time, it was even hotter. He could feel the restrained little bucks and shoves that Harry made, the way he wanted to go further but wouldn’t let himself, and all because Draco had told him to hold still. It was perfection. The quivers ran through Draco’s mouth into his cheeks and teeth, and he would have wanted to come again if the languor hadn’t still been hanging in his bones.  
  
He coaxed and worked with his mouth, and Harry tensed up. A gabble of noise came out of his parted lips, and Draco had the time and warning to decide whether he wanted to swallow or not.  
  
He decided that he did, and sealed his lips and hands down on Harry, ignoring Harry’s frantic efforts to move away.  
  
In the end, it wasn’t so overwhelming after all, only a little bitter, a little salty, a little sticky. Draco kept his mouth moving through it, sucking calmly, urging Harry on by the pressure of his fingers on his skin, and Harry finally gave in and let himself take it with a little moan and a little shake. Draco sat back when he was done and wiped off his lips, feeling enormously smug.  
  
The way Harry was gaping down at him as though he was the most amazing person ever to kneel helped a lot, too.  
  
“Not bad, was it?” Draco offered, and then Harry reached out and picked him up and swept him off the ground with that enormous werewolf strength Draco sometimes forgot he had, holding Draco up to face level and rocking him back and forth.  
  
“ _Not bad,_ he says.” Harry’s grin was as wild as his hair, as his eyes, as his magic. “Now I know what you look like when you’re fishing for compliments.” And he sealed his mouth over Draco’s as if he wanted to swallow what Draco already had.  
  
Draco leaned back in Harry’s arms, enjoying the kiss, near perfectly-relaxed by how strong Harry’s grip and tongue and hands were. If this was the kind of life that awaited him in a werewolf pack, he thought he would get along very well with it indeed.  
  
“The pack might take some time to accept you as my lover,” Harry murmured an endless time later, when Draco had lost himself for long enough in the kisses and was beginning to think about either a bath or at least some Cleaning Charms to get back to normal. “Is that all right with you?”  
  
“Are they going to challenge me for the position?” Draco asked suspiciously. He thought that a challenge protocol probably didn’t exist for the pack leader’s lover the way it did for the pack leader himself, but coming here had taught him how little he knew about werewolves and what they were capable of. He wouldn’t put it past them to come up with some crazy rule about something like this.  
  
Harry laughed aloud and fell back on the ground, bringing Draco sprawling with him. Draco tried to ignore the mud getting up his nose, and reminded himself about the Cleaning Charms. Even if Harry was more casual about that sort of thing because he was a werewolf, Draco could  _afford_ to be.  
  
And he was no longer an Unspeakable, who had to be crisp and presentable or be forced into it. He could be dirty if he wanted to.  
  
“No,” Harry said at last, when Draco shifted pointedly in his arms and he appeared to remember that he hadn’t actually answered Draco’s question. “They have sometimes  _aspired_ to the position, but I haven’t found someone who was both part of the pack and able to handle the challenges of being my lover.” He nuzzled his head against Draco’s ear. “Until you.”  
  
Draco thought about asking about that, about how this would work, when he was part of Harry’s pack and yet human, whether it was the done thing, whether it was something that other werewolf packs would accept, assuming they had to interact with those packs.  
  
But he didn’t want to ask. He wanted to lie on the forest floor in Harry’s arms until Harry remembered baths of his own free will, and got up and took Draco towards his house.  
  
And that was what they did.


	26. Slice the Unspeakables

"Pack leader." Sarah was loping alongside them before Harry could think about twice about the implications. She had seen both of them emerge from Harry's house at the same time, and her nose would tell her even more than their mussed clothes and hanging hair would. They  _had_ bathed, but then Draco had looked at Harry in that provocative way he had, and they'd ended up grinding against each other in the shower. That tended to get wet hair mussed.  
  
Harry turned to Sarah. Her mouth was open, and Harry had the impression that he could see almost all the way down her throat. He gave her a mostly empty smile. "Yes?"  
  
Sarah flickered her eyes at the ground as though she would kneel for a second, but then she pulled back and sighed at him. "Nothing, pack leader. Except that the pack is starting to wonder when the Unspeakables we captured are going to be sentenced."  
  
"You've done well to capture and hold them for this long given their unpredictable magic," Draco murmured behind Harry.  
  
Sarah canted her head back, and her face was strange. "Thank you. Although it was easy once we separated them from their artifacts."  
  
Harry reached back and gave Draco's arm a rough tap. Draco, from his shadowed half-smile, understood what Harry was implying perfectly well.   
  
 _This is the kind of diplomacy that he does know how to practice. Well done._  
  
They moved through the Forest easily, with Harry's nose telling him that a few members of his pack were escorting him. They moved tentatively and cautiously. They would have smelled the blood, and noted that Paracelsus was gone, and that the enemy that had brought the moon disk with her was also gone.  
  
If any of them objected to Draco becoming their pack leader's lover, they were smart enough not to say so right now.  
  
"Sir," said Sarah abruptly, and came to a stop. Harry saw why when he moved through the trees into one of the small clearings they sometimes used for the starts of hunts.  
  
The Unspeakables stood back-to-back inside a prowling circle of the pack. Even though none of them could fully change into werewolves unless the moon called them, they had enough strength and muscle to be fully intimidating to human-formed people.  
  
 _Especially people who are trained to regard all lycanthropy as a disease and fate worse than death,_ Harry thought, and wondered idly if the Ministry would ever understand what a weakness that was, not training their people to battle monsters that could infect them, as they understood it.  
  
He strode forwards, and only needed a moment of looking to spot Invisible Heldeson. She either wasn't wearing a glamour or an artifact that could cast one, or it had been stripped away. She stood a little back from the front of the group, in the middle, as though that would shelter her from prying eyes.  
  
Harry let his teeth flash, and reached out one beckoning hand. Lisa and June showed up from behind her, and Heldeson moved towards him.  
  
She was good, Harry had to admit. She managed to give the impression that she was just naturally drifting in that direction, not that she was being herded or driven. But they both knew the truth, and her eyes, as she halted before him, were burning with a pale hatred.  
  
Harry lifted his head, baring his throat in a gesture that his pack would understand as one of contempt. It didn't matter if the Unspeakables did or not. He was here to perform confidence for his pack, not for them. He heard Draco gasp behind him, and suspected Draco understood, as well.   
  
 _Although perhaps Sarah whispering to him filled him in._  
  
"You invaded my people's territory," Harry said quietly. "I know that you might have come at the behest of Dolores Umbridge. Or you might have come at the behest of Minister Hinsley, who is worried about my efforts to rescue one of my people from being made an outcast immediately after his release from Azkaban Prison. I will know which one it was."  
  
"The Unspeakables do not act at the behest of anyone but themselves," said Heldeson, without turning a hair. "You should know that, Mr. Potter, after your years as an Auror."  
  
Harry made a little twitch with one hand, and Lisa and June began to growl. Heldeson showed a sign of reaction to the werewolves behind her for the first time. Her eyes flickered in a way that let Harry know her ears would have been laid flat if she was a wolf, and her scent became a thick chain pleated with fear.  
  
"I know that you came here this time having given an artifact to someone else," Harry said, and nodded to the small bag that Draco held. As far as Harry could tell, the full moon artifact wasn't dangerous and couldn't compel a change except in the hands of someone actively hostile to a werewolf, but he still didn't want to touch it. "And I know that Dolores Umbridge is not an Unspeakable."  
  
"We keep the membership of our Department secret," said Heldeson, and it really did sound as though she was going to go through it and recite the lie with a serene face.  
  
"He has a source that came from the Department of Mysteries," said Draco, moving forwards to stand beside Harry. "And I  _can_ tell him that Dolores Umbridge was never an Unspeakable."  
  
Heldeson's hatred for Harry was nothing next to the loathing she showed Draco, although it was there more in the lines of her face and the tightness of her hands than anything else. Harry considered intervening, and then held himself back. He would weaken Draco both in his enemies' eyes and the pack's if Harry did everything for him.  
  
Besides, Draco was handling himself just fine.  
  
"You have no idea what loyalty is, do you?" Heldeson whispered, and her loathing was unbridled now. "You have no idea what we offered you, and what you now have spurned. The priceless gift that will never come again--"  
  
"Spare me the dramatics," said Draco, and he looked bored, as though he would have lounged against a tree if any were close enough. Harry wanted to hug him. "I betrayed the people who betrayed me. That's not a crime under any laws I'm aware of."  
  
Heldeson shut up for a second, and Draco swung the bag with the artifact again. "Tell me what Umbridge was doing with it."  
  
Heldeson opened her mouth in a way that Harry knew meant she would deny the request. He caught her eye, and growled.  
  
Either the growl was more impressive than his packmates', or Heldeson heard a greater threat in it because of what Harry had been before his turning. She paled and looked away from him, smothering her face in her hair.   
  
"We let her have it because that was her price," she whispered. "She was the one with the ability to move Minister Hinsley and have him give his permission for raiding here, with the Ministry glancing the other way. And in return, she asked to come along and to take an artifact with her that could force a werewolf, even a powerful pack leader, to transform."  
  
"I never knew there was such an artifact," said Draco, collectedly, as always. Harry flicked an eyebrow at him, and Draco smiled once before turning to Heldeson again. "Where did you come by it? Why didn't you give it to me when I came here to  _negotiate_ with Harry's pack?"  
  
There was still an undertone of hurt in his voice, Harry thought, and a smell of it radiating off him like steam rising from a swamp, although he didn't think either Draco or Heldeson were aware of the smell. But Heldeson picked up on the hurt itself, and used it as a weapon.  
  
"You think that you were ever important enough for that, Mr. Malfoy?" She glared straight at Draco as she spoke, and Draco flinched, probably from the lack of the Unspeakable title he had worked and fought for. "Your orders were to go and negotiate and do as you were told, once you received new orders. You were not to know about the existence of an artifact that powerful, or wish to use it if you had." She looked between Draco and Harry. "Your failure to control your desires is evident."  
  
"Of course she would say something like that," Harry said, casually and loudly, making Draco and Heldeson both turn to face him, although with Heldeson Harry thought it was against her will. "Why not? If she can hurt you at the same time as you're humiliating her, then maybe she can think she's won."  
  
"What was wrong with what I said?" Heldeson, give her credit, was overcoming her fear, and gave him a statue-like glance. Harry wondered if he would have to mime biting her to bring the fear back.  
  
"You gave a priceless artifact to someone who blackmailed you into coming along," Harry said. "That doesn't sound to  _me_ like you value people with either self-control or your own Unspeakables."  
  
Heldeson tightened her muscles as if against ropes for a second, but didn't say a word. Draco squeezed Harry's arm in return. Harry nodded to him, and faced Heldeson.  
  
"You came here to capture a werewolf, any one of my pack, and take them back to the Department of Mysteries so you could torture them in the name of studying them? Is that right?"  
  
A growl went up and down the scale out of the throats of his pack, and if Heldeson was too self-steadied now to flinch, that didn't apply to the rest of the Unspeakables. They huddled together, and Harry heard more than one whimper, nothing like the whimpers that even his pack would give in the face of fear or danger. They were harder than that. They had to be, given how many hated their very existence.  
  
"That is right," said Heldeson, and gave him a thin smile. "And it's no good appealing to the Ministry. The Minister knows all about it, and he won't give you the indulgence of condemning us."  
  
"Then he can't give  _you_ the indulgence of  _rescue_ , either," said Harry, and a slow chorus of howls rose from behind him.   
  
Heldeson tilted her head slowly to the side. "I don't think that you would like to have us in your pack, if you turned us."  
  
 _No. And you would probably either betray other werewolves, the way Umbridge would have, or go and take over a pack and use it against me._  
  
"When I turn someone, I try to make it a gift," said Harry. "Umbridge took that away from me, but so did you. And so no, you're right, we're not going to turn you." He gestured, and his circling pack fell back from the edges of the clearing, then bunched tightly together in most places, leaving a path open that led into the heart of the forest. "We're going to hunt you instead."  
  
"The purpose of a werewolf hunt is to turn someone," said an Unspeakable from behind Heldeson, in the dazed tones of a scholar trying to understand reality. Heldeson darted an angry glance at her, and she looked at the ground and pursed her lips. Harry shook his head. They might say they were so much better than werewolves in every way, but he would have tried to share and slow a packmate's fear and show why they didn't have to be afraid.  
  
"No," said Harry. "Not always. When we hunt animals, it's to eat them. And in this case, it's a punishment." He smiled at Heldeson. "We can't turn into wolves without the full moon, you know. You have a chance. You'll run on foot through the woods. We'll follow--on foot. You have the ability to use your hands to defend yourselves, and we have the ability to use anything we like."  
  
"You know that we might have artifacts we could use against you, too," said Heldeson, her voice small and quiet.  
  
"Unlikely," said Harry. "When we took anything off you that smelled of magic, the way we took your wands."  
  
"And he has an expert here, who could tell him if you  _did_ still have some artifacts," said Draco helpfully, stepping up behind Harry. He flicked his wand once, and a faint white light outlined the bodies of the Unspeakables, then bore down on their robes, hands, and faces. For a second, Harry thought that meant the presence of artifacts that his people had indeed missed, and tensed, although in that case, Invisible Heldeson would have been pretty stupid to brag about them.  
  
But the white glow faded, and Draco shook his head at Harry. "They've got rid of them. Or had them all taken. You see," he went on, his gaze resting on Heldeson's face, "I  _did_ learn the sort of guard spell that they used on the doors of the Department of Mysteries so they could tell if someone was trying to sneak off with a priceless magical treasure. And it's still good."  
  
Heldeson looked as if she would like to strangle Draco, and Harry intervened. "Do you want to come with us on the hunt? I don't know if you could keep up with us, but you're part of the pack. I do invite you along."  
  
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw June tense and lift her head to sniff. But either she could indeed smell the pack on Draco or she thought it worthwhile not to raise the issue right now, because she settled back on her haunches instead of saying anything.  
  
"I want to know if you're going to kill them," Draco said, in a whisper that wouldn't have made sense unless he was getting used to how powerful a werewolf's ears were.  
  
"No," said Harry. "Unless they try to harm a member of the pack again. We're going to chase them into dark places in the Forest, and leave them there."  
  
"So that something else can kill them?" Draco blinked and tilted his head. "I didn't think you wanted other people to do your dirty work for you."  
  
Harry was almost too pleased with Draco's calling other magical creatures "people" to answer the question. "It's not really that. We're giving them a sort of chance. Of course, they probably can't Apparate without their wands, which we aren't going to give back to them. But there's the  _tiny_ chance that they'll manage to live, and in that case, if they can get away from us and survive the Forest, we'll spare them."  
  
"But the chance isn't large."  
  
"No," said Harry, and gave him a small smile. "I'm afraid that someone else is going to have to rise to a high position within the Department of Mysteries, since Invisible Heldeson won't be returning."  
  
"If you're asking me whether I want to go back and be your spy in the Ministry," Draco said flatly, "the answer is no."  
  
"I would never ask you that," Harry said. "Not for a member of my pack." He rubbed the corner of his jaw along Draco's neck, leaving a long trail of scent that the right people would know how to interpret. "But do you want to come?"  
  
"You're faster than a human on foot in this form even though you're not a wolf," said Draco, and Harry nodded, although it hadn't been a question. "No. I'll stay here."  
  
Harry was about to question that, given that he would have thought Draco wanted to see vengeance enacted on his enemies, but then Draco gave him a long, slow smile. "I'll  _listen_ to what happens to them, though."  
  
Harry kissed him hard enough on the lips to make Draco waver backwards a little and some of his people stare. Well, they would just have to put up with it. "I'll howl extra loud, just for you."  
  
Then he turned around and faced Heldeson and the rest of the Unspeakables, and bared his teeth in a long, slow smile that made most of them pale. Heldeson didn't, but she also had her hands clenched hard enough in the sleeves of her robe to nearly rip the fabric, so Harry didn't think that counted.  
  
"Run," he suggested pleasantly, and then raised his voice in a long, mocking, ululating howl.  
  
The Unspeakables lasted thirty seconds before one of them broke and ran down the cleared path into the center of the Forbidden Forest. Heldeson went with them when June snapped at her heels, obviously not certain if Harry would keep his word.  _She_ wouldn't under similar circumstances, Harry knew.  
  
And that was the problem with never being honest. You distrusted everyone around you at the same time.  
  
The Unspeakables ran, and Harry and his pack followed, darting from shadow to shadow, howling when someone slowed down, hearing them trip over roots and cry out and try to catch themselves on trees and try to keep together, and failing at both tasks. And then the Unspeakables met the first of the dryads.  
  
Back in camp, Harry hoped Draco was listening well.  
  
*  
  
Draco closed his eyes and focused. It wasn't that hard to pick out the sounds of the hunt above the normal noises of the Forbidden Forest, once he knew what he was listening for.  
  
The werewolves coursed their prey, and the Unspeakables screamed and chattered with fear. And Draco thought he could hear the crunch of leaves beneath feet that were almost paws, and the sounds of desperate fingers reaching for a handhold on everything, the fear that drove them down one path competing with the common sense that wanted them to head back towards the edges of the Forest and the Apparition point.  
  
And he knew the first scream. Invisible Heldeson, and from the sound of it, she had met something she couldn't manipulate.  
  
Draco leaned back against the tree behind him, sated. He had vengeance. He had double vengeance, on someone who had tried to destroy him for her own, stupid reasons, as well as on the Department that had chewed him up and spat him out. He had a lover. He had his home, Malfoy Manor, back, whenever he chose to go.  
  
Even a second home to stay in, if he wanted.  
  
Draco grinned. Yes, he rather thought, even given Invisible Heldeson's years of taking advantage of him, that he had won this round.


	27. Lead the Dance

Harry leaned back on his bed, propped his feet on the headboard over Draco’s snoring face, and skimmed the letter from Minister Hinsley.  
  
 _Potter,_  
  
 _Things that happen in the Forest should stay in the Forest._  
  
 _The release of Tyr Thornsberry is happening tomorrow, at the gates of Azkaban. I trust you will be on hand to collect him. Remember that a werewolf who takes over another werewolf’s Scion is responsible for the Scion’s actions in the future._  
  
The Minister had signed the letter with all the full pomp of his titles, until Harry was surprised that the parchment could hold them all. He shook his head and snorted in amusement, and his snort woke Draco up.  
  
“You heard back from the Minister?” Draco clapped a hand over his mouth to hold down on his yawn. Harry leaned closer and brushed a little bit of hair away from his face. Draco, with the way he had when Harry surprised him, leaned back and scowled, a trickle of pink making his face flush vividly.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry. “He did what I expected. He can’t really accuse me of doing anything to the Unspeakables when he knows what they did, and he agreed to look the other way in the first place. And all his plans to deny me Thornsberry failed. It’s a simple solution on the surface: I take over where Fenrir Greyback left off and make sure that Thornsberry is safe to be around. It looks like I’m taking all the risk and the Ministry is able to wash his hands of him. He tried to stop me from doing that, fine, but there was a reason he did it in secret, you know? There are too many people who would be too interested in what he was doing if he acted openly.”  
  
The expression on Draco’s face had become merely tolerant about halfway through the speech, and now he shook his head and snorted. “Yes, I know all that. I probably know more about politics than you’ve forgotten.”  
  
 _Which is a lot,_ his tone implied. Harry smiled and leaned in, closer, until the point where he saw Draco’s eyes almost cross trying to keep track of him. “You probably have,” he agreed. “So let’s move on to something that I  _can_ teach you.”  
  
“What’s that?” Draco squirmed against him, eyes bright, and slid a hand down Harry’s chest. “Because if you mean to introduce me to matters of making love with a werewolf—”  
  
“I do,” said Harry, and heavily enough that Draco stopped squirming and looked at him. “Turn over.”  
  
For a second, the pink came back, flooding Draco’s face, and he hesitated as if he didn’t know what to do. Harry just held still, calmly watching Draco, not touching him. He didn’t need to. Their combined will, his power, and Draco’s desire beat in the air between them like the beating of copper wings.  
  
Draco finally swallowed heavily and rolled, his legs sprawling open. He still wore robes, as did Harry, for that matter. They had fallen into bed together tired from the debate with the pack over whether a human could be accepted as fully equal to a werewolf.  
  
Harry had pointed out that Draco  _smelt_ like pack, since Harry had spent so much time with him, thought of him that way, and could affect him with his power, and his followers had to agree with that. It wasn’t just being a werewolf that made someone part of a pack, after all, or Ninian could have stayed. In the end, scent and Draco having a place mattered much more.  
  
And Harry was glad they did. He didn’t want to give Draco up, didn’t want to wave goodbye as he headed off to Malfoy Manor or some other place, even if he knew that Draco would visit regularly.  
  
He wanted scent in the Forest with him, a body beside him to touch and rub and rut against, someone who would stare at him with flushed cheeks and panting mouth on a daily basis. He knew that eventually, he and Draco would discover other things they valued, too, and it would be a stronger bond than even the sexual one connecting them.  
  
For that to happen, though, the pack had needed to accept Draco, and grant him a place within its boundaries that had nothing to do with whether he was Harry’s lover or not. Harry was content that they’d done so.  
  
“Oh, Merlin,” said Draco in an apprehensive little voice.  
  
Harry laid a hand in the middle of Draco’s back, and glanced at the walls and windows. “Is something wrong?” He wondered if Draco was having second thoughts, or maybe entertaining doubts about whether other werewolves would accept him as Harry’s lover even if they thought of him as part of the pack.  
  
Draco buried his head in his arm laid along the pillow, and his resulting mutter was gibberish to Harry’s ears. Harry poked him a little. “English, please.”  
  
“I’ll take your bloody fucking English and…” Draco trailed off as he turned and met Harry’s eyes. He promptly shivered and lowered his gaze and said, “I want you to fuck me like I haven’t wanted anything in a long time, all right? It’s embarrassing.”  
  
Harry was on him in a second, unable to hold back once he heard Draco make that confession, that sound of desire. He kissed Draco hard enough to strain Draco’s neck, and then put his head back down on the pillow and whispered, “You can just lie there and let me take care of you.”  
  
From the massive shudder that filled Draco’s body, Harry reckoned that was indeed a welcome option. He smiled and began stripping Draco with gentle motions, only having to roll him to the side once or twice when he lay on the material of his robes.  
  
And Harry wasn’t ashamed to confess that his hands trembled as he did it, or that his mouth filled with saliva.  
  
It felt like this had been a long time coming.  
  
*  
  
Draco had almost convinced himself that as long as he kept his red face firmly pressed against his arm, where it essentially served as a heating blanket, he had nothing to worry about.  
  
Almost.  
  
But it felt so sensual, the way Harry was stripping him, sweet and protracted and it made all his skin flush and tingle as if he was a child again. He knew no one was looking in or listening in; the werewolves’ houses stood a considerable distance apart from each other in the clearings for a reason. But he wondered if his scent would float to them and what it would make them think.  
  
His breathing was fast and shallow, and Harry paused with a hand on the nape of his neck. “You’re really all right?” he whispered.  
  
Draco concentrated on the ache in his groin and lungs and arse instead of the flush of his skin and replied, “I won’t be if you take too much longer.”  
  
Harry’s voice came out almost as a growl, a laugh, relieved, and he started taking Draco’s clothes off again. Draco rolled to the side so that Harry could get the robes that were bunched around his waist, and Harry took the chance to lean forwards and connect their gazes.  
  
Draco felt his face flush again. He was no submissive werewolf, or someone who wanted to challenge Harry by looking into his eyes, either, but it was heady to be the focus of that much intense attention.  
  
Harry licked his lips and barely held back a pant. He was smiling as he removed his own robes, and Draco reached out and let his hand linger on a silvery, sunburst-shaped scar on Harry’s shoulder.  
  
“That’s not even the infection scar,” Harry told him cheerfully. “Just a scar from one of the first fights that I had when I was becoming pack leader and they mandated fighting in wolf form instead of in a wizards’ duel.”  
  
Draco didn’t say anything. It was still a scar from the teeth of a werewolf, and that made it significant enough for him.  
  
Harry appeared impatient with his silence, and started kissing him again. Draco rolled over easily, going with it, his body warm but his breath as shallow and rushed as if he was cold. Harry bent down and reached for his wand, murmuring, “How often have you done this?”  
  
Draco was tempted to misunderstand and make a smart comment in response, but Harry caught his eyes again and he realized that he couldn’t do that. Didn’t want to.  
  
 _Didn’t want to waste the time,_ he admitted to himself a minute later. There was teasing and foreplay, those had their places, but Draco thought he’d had enough of them for the whole bloody pack.  
  
“Not recently,” he said. “Often enough, before that.”  
  
Harry nodded, and Draco slowly relaxed; Harry wasn’t going to ask for details or who would want to sleep with someone who’d been a Death Eater. And Draco wouldn’t have to admit that sometimes he’d taken comfort where he could find it.  
  
Harry cast a spell that coated his fingers with gobs of clear, sticky lube. Draco reached down and hauled his legs up, eying Harry’s fingers a bit dubiously.  
  
“I’ve never had that kind before. Is it cold?”  
  
Harry didn’t answer, and Draco glanced up at him.  
  
A second later, he began to smile, and couldn’t help it. Where the news of his past lovers hadn’t stopped Harry in his tracks, the sight of Draco’s arse and spread legs did. His eyes already looked a little glazed.  
  
Draco arched his neck, feeling in control for the first time since Harry had rolled him over. He tilted his head and his legs back at the same time, glad now for the intense physical training that all the Unspeakables were put through, although it had been bothersome enough when he had to do it.  
  
“What I want to  _do_ to you,” Harry said, his voice a growl, and then he reached out and skimmed his fingers lightly over Draco’s arsehole.  
  
Draco jumped in spite of himself, and muttered, “That lube  _is_ cold. I want you to warm it up before you slide into me.”  
  
Harry made a loud sucking or slurping sound; it was hard to tell which. Draco relaxed back against the pillow and let his legs drop. He knew Harry had the motivation now not only to make the lube warm, but to reach anywhere that he couldn’t reach right now.  
  
Harry’s hands parted his legs gently, leaving smears of lube on the inside of Draco’s thighs. Draco opened his mouth to protest again, but then Harry cast a spell, and Draco relaxed into shivering warmth.  
  
“You like that,” Harry whispered.  
  
Draco didn’t complain, because it would make him look stupid, and he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to disparage Harry’s efforts, either, not when they meant he would get a good fucking soon. He just tucked his legs out of the way and shivered in something Harry couldn’t mistake as anything but pleasure when Harry reached inside him.  
  
All the lube was warm, now, and Draco didn’t need to make another protest. If he groaned, there were other reasons for that than discomfort. If he parted his legs and slid his heels hard on the sheets of the bed, that could be attributed to him wanting to make sure that Harry had room for his head and hands.  
  
Harry stretched him with hands that shook only occasionally, and then whispered, in a voice that had an odd component of reverence to it, “Draco, can you look at me?”  
  
Draco turned his head and fixed eyes that he knew were bright on Harry’s face.  
  
“Good,” said Harry. “I want you to go on looking at me, no matter how hard it gets.” And he started sliding into Draco’s body before Draco could make any jokes about his unfortunate choice of words.  
  
 _Or not so unfortunate,_ Draco thought, and arched his back. God, that felt  _good,_ even where it would have felt painful in the past. Or maybe he was just getting distracted by the fact that his emptiness had been more painful up until now.  
  
Harry settled himself fully inside Draco, his eyes closed, puffing a little.   
  
“You’re cheating,” Draco said mildly. “You wanted me to look at you, but you closed your eyes because of the sensation.”  
  
“Only because it was so intense,” Harry said quickly, and opened his eyes again.  
  
Draco had to smile, and reach up to link his fingers with Harry’s, so Harry would know he was kidding. The only thing that he wanted to share was Harry was an equal relationship. He never wanted Harry to feel guilty or indebted to him.  
  
At least, from the rapturous smile that spread across Harry’s face as he began to move, that was the last thing he felt right now.  
  
And Draco didn’t feel it, either. He was pushing back with his arse against Harry’s cock, feeling it so deep inside him that it drove out all the emptiness and almost all the desire. This was desire fulfilled, joy and pleasure and happiness.  
  
He would find other things to do with Harry later, but for now, this was what he wanted, and what he was getting.  
  
Harry gave it to him hard, his lip caught between his teeth. Draco tried to say something teasing and flirtatious then, something about how it was a good thing Harry was already a werewolf so he couldn’t turn himself again, but it wouldn’t come out through his hoarse moans and the sound of the bed creaking.  
  
 _I hope a werewolf isn’t strong enough to break a bed,_ Draco thought, a second before his back bowed and he had to hope that an orgasm wasn’t strong enough to break a werewolf bed.  
  
Harry followed him a minute later, his back bowed, too, and a triumphant noise that had a little too much of the howl in it for Draco’s taste breaking from his lips. He slumped over Draco with a motion that Draco tried to protest, but both of them were still catching their breaths.  
  
“I really, really wanted that,” said Harry, and curled up around him, nuzzling Draco’s neck.  
  
Draco closed his eyes and was silently smug, because he had, too.  
  
*  
  
Harry paced slowly around the big, blond werewolf. They had met him at the Azkaban gates, and the first thing Tyr Thornsberry had done was growl at Harry.  
  
He had looked more than a little unnerved when Harry didn’t growl back, and now he was standing still with his head stiffly uplifted, his arms folded, so obviously preventing himself from spinning to confront Harry that it was its own kind of loss of face.  
  
Harry came to a stop, and nodded. He thought that Greyback’s mark on Thornsberry actually wasn’t as deep as it could have been. Five years in Azkaban had weakened it.  
  
And the man’s eyes on him were full of a feral glow that Harry recognized. Not the desire to attack, the way the human-formed people hovering just out of reach with cameras probably assumed. The hunger for a pack, for people like him.  
  
“These are the rules,” Harry said gently. “You hunt the full moon with us tonight.” He saw Thornsberry’s eyes burning even brighter, and smiled. He probably made a magnificent wolf. “You take Wolfsbane. You obey me. You don’t challenge me for pack leader for at least a month. You don’t talk about hunting or killing people who aren’t werewolves.”  
  
Thornsberry blinked, but said only, “Why the last one?”  
  
“Because my mate isn’t one,” said Harry, and nodded to Draco, who had been standing behind him all the time. Harry wasn’t surprised that Thornsberry hadn’t noticed him, though. He was fairly focused on his new pack leader, which was of course all to the good.  
  
Thornsberry stared some more. Then he said, “Those are rules that I can put up with for a month…pack leader.”  
  
“Good,” said Harry, and he would have Apparated them back to the Forbidden Forest. There was still the ritual of greeting to go through with the pack, and the way that Thornsberry would disrupt their hierarchies.  
  
But Thornsberry only stood there, and when Harry glanced at him with a bit of impatience, he said, “Is your mate going to join us on the hunt tonight?”  
  
Harry glanced back at Draco. “He can answer that for himself.”  
  
*  
  
Draco gave Thornsberry a slow smile, and saw him start and stare, his nostrils working as if he wanted to catch all the nuances of Draco’s scent.  _Yes,_ Draco thought.  _Good. I know how to deal with bullies among the Unspeakables, and you’re far less subtle than Heldeson was._  
  
He inclined his head. “For now, I’m going to use spells to run along as fast as you can, and observe. Perhaps I’ll join the kill next time.”  
  
Thornsberry blinked a few times, and then abruptly inclined his head and gave Draco a half-bow. “A worthy mate for you to have, pack leader,” he said.  
  
Draco reached out and laid his hand casually on Harry’s arm. “I’ll see you later,” he said. “I’m going to go back to the Manor and take a look at a few artifacts.”  
  
Harry nodded and kissed him, and Draco reveled in that, that sign of life and desire in this bleak, grey place, and their joined but not identical lives. “I’ll see you no later than moonrise.”  
  
His voice contained a slight warning, but Draco only had to smile and say, “I’ve seen you transformed before, if you’re so anxious to show yourself off,” to win a smile and a laugh from Harry, and a blink from Thornsberry.  
  
Draco stepped into the only area free of spells preventing Apparition and left, his spirit soaring and snapping like a banner on the wind.  
  
 _They wanted to use me as a tool. I proved that I’m not. That’s more than enough to be happy about._  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
